Government Executive - Workforce

These award-winning feds want to advance science for the public good — and challenge stereotypes about government work

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 14:27:55 -0500

Jan Tyler said she was a “math nerd” in high school and college. She’s been able to pursue that passion while working for the federal government, helping to manage the Energy Department’s teacher fellowships, K-12 programs and the National Science Bowl, an annual competition that quizzes middle and high school students on their knowledge of science and math.

When asked what her most impactful work at the agency has been, however, Tyler pointed to the Presidential Super Intelligence Challenge, a Trump administration initiative for students and teachers to learn how to use artificial intelligence.

“This gave us a chance to give them a safe opportunity to even just learn about [AI] or to play with it a little bit, and the response just blew us away,” she said. “We had about 25,000 registrations, and I think we were hoping for maybe 2,500 registrations. So it really did reach all parts of the country, and we were really proud of that.”

Tyler is one of seven federal employees who will receive the Arthur S. Flemming award this upcoming Sunday from the National Academy of Public Administration and George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. The awards program recognizes career civil servants who have between three and 15 years of experience in the fields of applied science and engineering, basic science or leadership and management.

Tyler shared that receiving recognition is unusual for her.

“I'm the kind of person that likes to work behind the scenes,” she said. “Everyone [in government] wants to be there to do something good. We're certainly not there for the recognition.”

More than 700 feds have received the award over its more than 75-year-history, including Neil Armstrong (1969), Dr. Anthony Fauci (1979) and William Phillips (1987), a National Institute of Standards and Technology scientist who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1997.

This year, Phillips is being presented with a Flemming lifetime achievement award. He received the recognition in 2020 but did not accept the award in person because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

William Phillips in 1997, the year he won the Nobel. Credit: HECTOR MATA / Getty Images

Phillips said that he has stayed at NIST for nearly 50 years because of the shared mission to solve problems for the public benefit as well as the cool coworkers.

“The people that I work with on a daily basis here at NIST are just so amazing. It's such a pleasure to be able to go next door to somebody who is an expert in things that I am not an expert in, but who is working very closely with me,” he said. “To get to go to the next building over and talk to somebody who was the architect of one of the key theories that allows us to understand the way atoms behave when they are at temperatures of a millionth of a degree above absolute zero, and say, ‘Okay, I don't understand what what we're seeing in the lab. Help me out here.’”

The Flemming lifetime achievement award is named after Katharine B. Gebbie, a former NIST lab director. During her tenure, four agency scientists, including Phillips, won Nobel prizes in physics.

Phillips recalled an incident when Gebbie decided to close out research after a partner agency withdrew its support, but she ensured that all impacted employees were able to move into other roles at NIST.

“She made sure every one of those people found a place to use their talents at NIST. What an amazing woman to have the kind of courage to say ‘We're going to use this as an opportunity to do even better, and we're going to make sure everybody comes out of this in good shape,’” he said. “I just can't imagine having either the courage or the skill to make that happen. She did, and I was always in awe of her.”

Katharine B. Gebbie, who passed away in 2016. Credit: Denease Anderson / NIST via Wikimedia Commons

At a NAPA event earlier this year, Phillips spoke about his frustration with the phrase “close enough for government work” and its implication that civil servants don’t strive to improve their performance. He pointed out, as an example, that atomic clocks have gotten significantly more precise in recent decades because of federal research.

Similarly, Kathryn Keenan, a fellow NIST scientist, is receiving a Flemming award for her work to develop more effective breast cancer screenings and improve the accuracy of MRI. Specifically, she’s helped to develop objects “so you can test your scanner to see if you are making correct measurements.”

She said that this research was necessitated about two decades ago after pharmaceutical companies realized there was so much variability in MRI systems that it was difficult to tell in clinical trials if a drug was working.

“Our end goal is that you could get the same scan, collect the same images on multiple different MRI systems and you would get the same result,” she said. “It sounds like that should already exist, and it doesn't.”

After she found out that she would be receiving the Flemming award, she said that she “sat in my office and cried a little bit.”

“I know government employees, and I know how hard we all work and we have been portrayed differently than I know us to be,” Keenan said. “Our day-to-day experience has become more challenging, so it's very meaningful to have that effort and work recognized.”

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Post-midterms, federal unions push for pay raise, restoration of bargaining rights

Erich Wagner — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 15:53:00 -0500

Following the drubbing of congressional Republicans in Tuesday’s midterm election, federal employee unions are hopeful that the change in control on Capitol Hill will precipitate action to roll back some of the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the federal workforce.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Democrats were projected to hold at least a 54-seat majority in the Senate and at least 237 seats in the House, flipping both chambers. Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, held a lead over Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, with around 70% of votes counted, while the margins in Mississippi’s race between Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Scott Colom remained razor-thin at press time.

“The American people sent a crystal-clear message in this election that they want major change in Washington,” said American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley in statement Wednesday. “They are tired of this administration’s corruption, abuse of power and systemic assault on our shared government that began with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and continues to this day. I share their sentiments and look forward to the 120th Congress passing legislation to correct the injustices of the past few years and pulling DOGE corruption up by its roots.”

Union leaders said Wednesday that while they have a laundry list of Trump-era personnel and labor policies to target, two in particular are at the top of their agenda: unwinding two executive orders that stripped two-thirds of the federal workforce of their collective bargaining rights, and overriding President Trump’s planned 2027 pay freeze for most civilian federal employees.

“Specifically, I urge the incoming Congress to pass legislation overturning President Trump’s orders from last year that illegally eliminated collective bargaining rights for more than a million federal employees,” Kelley said. “Our nation’s civil servants work with dignity and honor to serve the American public, and stripping them of fundamental workplace rights and protections was an egregious wrongdoing that must be corrected.”

Matt Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, told Government Executive that some lawmakers’ inaction in the face of the administration’s push to erode their collective bargaining and due process rights motivated federal workers to oust them, like long-time Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

“I’ll go back to Susan Collins, who lost: she’s chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and she writes the appropriations bills,” Biggs said. “Why didn’t she write a defund [of Trump’s anti-union EOs] into those? I think not using that power to at least try to appeal these EOs hurt her with the many federal employees in her state.”

Biggs said that while some priorities, like contesting the White House’s impoundment of congressionally appropriated funds, will have to wait until the new Congress is seated in January, he is hopeful that lawmakers in both parties will agree to move forward on other priorities when they return to Washington next week. He noted that the GOP-controlled House already has language in its draft of the still pending 2027 National Defense Authorization Act nullifying Trump’s union EO for the Defense Department workforce.

“We’re going to play the game, get on the field and do everything we can to reverse the union EOs in the lame duck,” he said. “We fully expect this to be a top priority. And the pay raise is huge as well—we’re really pushing hard for that to be addressed in an appropriations bill or [continuing resolution].”

Some local union leaders are also calling on the new Congress to stop agency-specific policies, like the proposed downsizing or elimination of the Education Department.

“For nearly two years, the Trump administration has stopped at nothing—ignoring court orders, Congress and federal law—to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education,” said Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252. “They have unlawfully fired hardworking public servants, carelessly transferred our programs to other federal agencies with no expertise, cancelled billions of dollars in critical education grants and sown chaos for students, families and communities. Congress has the power and the will of the voters to hold this administration accountable for its lawlessness.”

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‘Exit survey’ of former feds finds fears of civil service politicization under Trump — and many willing to return to their agencies

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 13:50:35 -0500

The civil service has lost a net of nearly 300,000 employees since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, according to federal workforce data, as his administration seeks to downsize agency worker headcounts through firings, layoffs and separation incentives.

Because agencies generally did not conduct exit surveys for workers who were pushed out or otherwise left the federal service, a research collaborative of colleges and universities focused on studying the government workforce sought to fill that gap.

“No one asked the departed, at scale and with a carefully designed and vetted instrument, what happened to them and why they left,” wrote public administration professors Gary Hollibaugh and William Resh of the Accountability and Reform Research Consortium in an October report. “So, we asked.”

ARRC surveyed more than 2,000 former career civil servants from 55 agencies who left government on or after Nov. 5, 2024, gleaning new insights into why these individuals separated, what their experiences were like and whether they’d return to federal service.

Politicization was the top answer that respondents gave for why they separated, with nearly half of them including it as one of their primary three reasons.

“For comparison, compensation and career advancement — two conventional retention levers — landed near the bottom,” Hollibaugh and Resh wrote.

The researchers disaggregated the survey results based on the former feds’ political ideology and found that several groups (“slightly liberal,” “moderates,” “slightly conservative” and “other”) all reported similar levels of politicization based on a five-point scale.

“The differences are smaller than a simple partisan-grievance account might predict, and every group averages at or above the scale midpoint,” they wrote.

Researchers also asked respondents to report how coerced they felt into leaving on a 0 to 1 scale, with the average answer for those who were laid off being 0.75 compared with those who retired as planned being 0.17.

The Office of Personnel Management has emphasized that the majority of the 2025 federal workforce separations were voluntary as a result of the deferred resignation program, under which participants generally received several months of full pay and benefits in exchange for leaving federal service.

But Hollibaugh and Resh noted that the average coercion score for survey participants who separated under the DRP was 0.50, which is closer to the layoff average than the planned retirement one.

“The typical [DRP] account collected in our survey describes an offer accepted out of fear of an alternative — layoff, removal or reassignment — that the respondent found unacceptable,” they wrote. “In short, an exit that looks voluntary in administrative records can still be experienced by the employee as a highly constrained choice.”

Additionally, the ARRC survey reported that 87% of respondents who were laid off or removed said “yes” or “maybe” when asked if they’d consider returning to federal service, with “alignment with mission” and a “changed political environment” being the top reasons that would motivate them to return.

“For policymakers who seek to rebuild federal capacity, these results identify a potentially receptive pool of former employees, though they do not establish that restoration is the only or preferred policy objective or how long those people may be willing to wait,” the researchers wrote.

The ARRC was convened by the Volcker Alliance, a public service-focused nonprofit. The researchers stressed that the sample in the survey is nonrandom and that they relied on respondents’ “retrospective self-report.”

Hollibaugh and Resh also found that nearly half of respondents had not found work at the time they were surveyed. This aligns with other recent polls of former feds.

A group of ex-civil servants earlier this year surveyed more than 300 new and recently promoted feds who were fired en masse by the Trump administration before they completed their probationary period, and the most common response to a question about their job search was “still unemployed.”

And a former foreign service officer who is now pursuing a graduate degree conducted a survey of nearly 3,800 staffers for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration shuttered, or a partner organization. Only 40% of respondents to that poll, which was conducted in the spring, reported that they’ve found full-time employment.

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The census shows what government does well — and what political interference could break, author argues

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 10:05:15 -0400

With four years to go until the next decennial headcount of the U.S., the Census Bureau is facing several challenges. The agency has lost about 17% of its workforce since 2024, according to federal workforce data, and the Trump administration is seeking to nix questions about race and ethnicity, and exclude undocumented migrants from the population totals that determine political representation..

danah boyd, a Cornell professor who has lowercased her first and last name since childhood, was embedded in the Census Bureau around the 2020 census when civil servants managed to count the country despite facing new debates around privacy, Trump’s failed attempt in his first term to add a citizenship question and, notably, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Based on that experience, as well as interviews with hundreds of Census employees, boyd wrote a book titled: “Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power and the Civil Servants Who Saved the U.S. Census.”

In an interview with Government Executive, boyd explains how society treats civil servants and teenagers similarly, why the results of the upcoming midterm elections will significantly shape operations for the 2030 census and what needs to be done to strengthen America’s Jenga-like democratic system.

Editor’s note: The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q. You have had a range of experiences in the tech industry, in nonprofits and in academia, yet you write that, while at the Census Bureau, “I have never witnessed such systematized coordination, such in-depth planning or such an intentional dedication to resilience.” How surprised are people when you tell them this?

A. They don't believe me, including civil servants. One of the stories that I tell in the book is of a technical worker at the Bureau who was walking me through all of the different systems, and I was just awestruck by how thoughtful she was about her systems and about how much redundancy and resilience was baked into them. I explained this to her, and she was like, "You've been in industry, you've seen real products launch. There's no way that what we do is better." And I was like, "You are out of your mind. What you're doing is really phenomenal!" Fast forward, she is one of the people who was forced out by the Department of Government Efficiency, and she is now working in the tech industry. I regularly get text messages from her being like, "I know you said it was insane, but it's truly insane in industry."

I think part of it is to recognize that civil servants are building systems that will be resilient to anything. They need to count everybody once, only once and in the right location. Because of this, they're building systems that will work on outdated operating systems, old phones that nobody thinks about, that will be able to withstand all sorts of strange configurations, like having a phone work when there's no cell tower nearby. All of that is part of their plan.

If you talk to people in industry, they shrug and they're like, "Eh, that's not our top priority. We are not really interested in making certain we serve those people.” But for the government, they're going to serve everybody, and that is such a different orientation.

Q. You write that political appointees during Trump’s first term pressured Census employees to implement Schedule F in a way that “bordered on harassment.” In his second term, Trump has implemented Schedule F as Schedule Policy/Career, removing civil service protections from about 8,000 federal jobs. What fears would you have about an increased number of political appointees at the Census Bureau?

A. Article One, Section Two of the Constitution gives Congress the ability to conduct a census. Congress has subsequently given certain authorities over to the executive branch, including to operationalize the census, but a census is not meant to be a partisan activity. A census is meant to be something that serves the public as a whole and guarantees that we have the data necessary to allocate representatives to the states and implement different kinds of laws, including federal funding formulas and anti-discrimination laws.

Until the first Trump administration, it was quite uncommon for the executive branch to get involved at all. There were very few political appointees, and they were primarily the director, the person in charge of communication and intergovernmental agency liaisons. They were not involved in the micromanagement of the methodology or the ways of actually operationalizing the census. The assumption was that the civil servants and their professional expertise would drive how the census would be operationalized. Of course, they still reported to Congress. So the Census Bureau would make changes, it would provide those to Congress and Congress has the authority to come back and be like, “No, no, no, do it differently.” But generally, Congress stayed out of it.

This is all different, and this is different on many different fronts. This is different in terms of the number of people that are politically appointed. This is different in terms of the detailed level of micromanagement of the procedures themselves. We are currently watching this unfold. On Sept. 10, the current administration issued a Federal Register notice that basically was a change of how the residence rules were to be operationalized for the 2030 census. It is a mind-boggling change from the previous decades. To give you a flavor, the Census Bureau used to make these really tiny micro edits to the residence rules, followed by thousands of pages of research and documentation. And everybody would shrug their shoulders and move on.

This Federal Register notice has a very clear partisan-oriented opening, which is very peculiar. There are a ton of radical changes that raise questions about constitutionality, that undermine congressional authority around how to do the work, that make it impossible to implement certain laws, that are operationally nearly impossible to implement, that lack clarity and there is no research provided. There are no details of why these changes are to be done, and the civil servants have been told that they are not to speak to anybody publicly until the comment period is over. That is mind-boggling. This goes against every norm and process of the modern Census Bureau, and so it is not just the introduction of more political appointees or converting people into this new schedule. It's also a complete disruption of norms and processes.

Q. It sounds like you're still talking with Census employees, even though this book is finished.

A. Absolutely. I'm talking both with former civil servants and current civil servants. Let's be clear: the people that are inside the federal government, inside the civil service, are working hard on behalf of the American public, and they are committed to the mission. They are dedicated. They do the work regardless of who is attacking them. They have worked for Republicans and Democrats throughout their career. They believe it is their responsibility to serve the public, and so this is heartbreaking for them.

They want to be able to take their expertise, their experience and bring it to bear. They don't like being silenced. They almost constitutionally desire overexplaining everything. They're like, “We want to give you the research and the details and the technical information.” Sometimes, of course, that's a little too much. But this is where the fact that they are being pushed to do things that they can't defend from a scientific and technical place is confounding to them.

Q. You cover an incident during the 2020 census when officials decided to use an agency-produced system to enable individuals to self-respond online for the census instead of a tool developed by a contractor because the government-created product performed better during testing. What would you say this incident shows about the state of technology in the federal government?

A. The Census Bureau has a long history of producing some of the most important technologies out there. Let us not forget that in 1880, when the Census was struggling to tabulate its data, it called on somebody to come help. The person who ended up helping is a man named Herman Hollerith. He took the technology he created for the census and converted it into a business that we know as IBM. We can keep counting over and over again the number of technologies that the Census Bureau has innovated and enabled not just for the government but for the private sector as well.

The challenge that the Census Bureau has faced, like many federal agencies, is decades of pressure to outsource everything. Both Republicans and Democrats have forced them to outsource, including mission-critical components, even though they're supposed to be able to have mission-critical technologies built in-house. But it's hard to pull off the justification to build in-house because there's all sorts of Kafkaesque restrictions that make that very difficult.

When it came to the self-response technology, under the Obama administration at the time, it became clear that they would need to outsource. So they did the public call. Of course, the contractor is very slick, very capable of selling a system. But there's all sorts of broken incentives for being able to make sure that this system could work with evolving technologies. It was supposed to work on an iPhone. The iPhone kept changing. It had to work on the web. Well, internet technologies kept changing. The Bureau tried to write the best contractor requirements document they could imagine, but there are limits.

As deadlines were coming closer, the civil servants who had created the pilot technology said, "Hey, what if the contractor can't deliver?” So they decided to take what was originally the prototype, turn it into the backup system and they even went to then Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — by this point the first Trump administration was in power — and said, "We're going to have this backup system." Ross supported them and said like, "Yeah, this is mission-critical. Have that backup system."

But then the way that that information became part of the public dialogue was a complete mess and involved a journalist’s narrative that this was a wasteful act by civil servants who couldn't manage a contractor. It ended up in hearings. It ended up in this whole big spectacle, when actually what the Census Bureau was doing was making certain that their systems were resilient by making them redundant, and we don't appreciate that thoughtfulness. When you have mission-critical systems, redundancy is a very good strategy. So the civil servants not only are capable of producing the technology themselves, but they're also capable of seeing that having backups is a critical part of making sure that the mission-critical work of the census can continue.

Q. You bring up that political actors on both the left and right have recently accused the Census Bureau of being biased against them. You also note that distrust in the census is hardly new, as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were apparently “skeptical” about the results of the first census. How can government leaders rebuild trust in the census?

A. The irony of the 2020 census is that by every statistical measure and scientific evaluation, these data are better than all censuses produced in the 19th and 20th century. We can quibble about what happened in 2000 and 2010 because there's a lot of metrics by which those censuses are better than 2020. But let's put a big old asterisk around 2020, and call the pandemic the biggest disruption to the 2020 census.

What is it about these data — that are really, really good by most measures — that people believe are terrible? That's where this issue of trust comes in because the Census Bureau has become politicized and because our distrust in government is an extension of our distrust in whoever the administration is. So the civil servants are constantly battered by everybody, and they often joke that the only thing that the Republicans and Democrats agree on is that civil servants are terrible people, which is painful. Dark humor is part of being in the government these days.

But trust is not just about the partisan actors. Trust is also about the ecosystem of stakeholders. In the case of the census, this includes, for example, data users, and we've seen a loss of trust in the data user community as well as the political actors. Why? Some people will tell you it's the change in processes about differential privacy or the modernization of the confidentiality procedures, but I actually think that it's something much more basic. Up until about a decade ago, we saw the Census Bureau had all these mechanisms by which they were in constant conversation with external stakeholders. They went to conferences.

There were formal processes, like the federal advisory committees, but most of the really important work was actually done over stale cookies and really bad coffee. That kind of relational work allowed people to ask questions like, “This choice that you made about how you measured that thing, I don't think I agree with it.” Then the Census employee can say, “Ah, this is why, and here's how we did our set of trade-offs.” And then the data user can reply, “Oh, that's interesting,” and back and forth.

We saw a loss in the ability to maintain those external relations. It began decades ago, but it became more acute through austerity budgeting under Obama, more acute under the first Trump administration, even more acute during the COVID-19 pandemic and even more acute under the Biden administration where it was a combination of the pandemic and austerity budgeting and now, of course, it's impossible. If you don't know a civil servant, if you don't know the people that are making these data, it's easy to demonize them or treat them as some sort of other.

I think that that loss of social fabric around our civic institutions is costing us at the Census Bureau and beyond. Because that's how we trust systems. If you want a parallel, I grew up in a place where many people I went to high school with, many people in my community, were in the military. We had a trust of the military because you knew the people. Then I went to college, where no one knew anybody in the military, and they distrusted the military. It's this reminder that the closer you are to how the systems work, the more you trust it completely with its imperfections. The Census Bureau is imperfect; all government agencies are imperfect. But that doesn't mean that these census workers are not working their tushes off to make certain that we get the best data possible because they absolutely are.

Q. Given the challenges that you've highlighted, do you think it's possible for the Census Bureau to rebuild trust with the left, the right and other stakeholders ahead of the 2030 census?

A. I think it is possible to rebuild trust, but ahead of the 2030 census, I am not sure. We are going to elect a new Congress next week. Regardless of who wins, that Congress will have some of the most important decisions to be made about the census. Those decisions are primarily made in years that end in seven and eight. That is really critical because if Congress takes back its authority, which it has every right to do, it can do many things to help guard against whatever is happening. If it continues to close its eyes and pretend like they can deal with this later, it's going to be very, very difficult.

The way to really rebuild the system is for Republicans and Democrats in the new Congress that will seat in January 2027 to recognize the importance of protecting this institution and to do it together. Of course, that is not an easy ask in this particular political climate. But is it possible? Yes. Do I have every confidence in it? No. Can I be hopeful? Yes.

I also want to be clear for anybody who thinks about census timelines, by the time we are in January 2029, the forms have been printed. Things are rolling, so this is not something where Congress can close its eyes and hope that the next Congress deals with it. This is really about the present, and I think it's very difficult right now for both our representatives and our senators to understand the significance of their distancing from this.

We've had history where things have gone wrong, and people have stepped back in. One of the most notable stories here is the 1920s, where things were so dysfunctional in 1921 that we did not reapportion Congress, even though we were supposed to. The Senate got very frustrated with this, and in 1929 came in and was like, "We are going to pass a law. We are going to make this happen, so that we do not roll into a never-ending constitutional crisis." So again, it's possible to rebuild trust, but to really do the work is going to require Congress at this stage.

Q. You write that this book is “my invitation to the public to step up to protect our administrative state before it is too late.” It reminded me of the speech that Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., gave after he was re-elected speaker in which he said “We are going…to roll back the totalitarian fourth branch of government known as the administrative state." If you had the opportunity, what would you say to Speaker Johnson to convince him that the “administrative state” should be protected?

A. I'm not sure that I can persuade Johnson, but I'll say that one of the things that fascinated me working inside and witnessing the federal government was to realize how many of the people who do the work on behalf of the American people are naturalized citizens. When I asked naturalized citizens why they chose to work for the federal government, over and over again I heard the same story: “I come from a country where — insert authoritarianism, insert corruption, insert abuses of power and egregious things" — all the things that we as a country, the United States, has stood in opposition to for our entire history. We have worked so hard to ensure that we would have a robust and resilient democratic republic. These civil servants who are naturalized citizens understand that a democracy is not just about elected officials and the laws but also the actual operationalization of those laws.

Congress passes all sorts of laws, but to execute them requires an administrative state, and those are the people who are making certain that the laws passed by Congress actually play out to help the American people. We might disagree on what those laws are, and many of us do. But it is important that we have the ability to actually make those things possible. One of the egregious parts of the present day is that when we don't like laws, we have reached the point of making it impossible to implement them. Don Moynihan and Pamela Herd called this “policymaking by other means.” I think it's really important to recognize how destructive that is to a truly checks-and-balance-oriented democracy that we have architected.

I understand the posturing that people like to do when they want to demonize the administrative state. But even people who do that performatively want the administrative function to work when it is the laws they passed. They just don't want it to work with the laws that they don't agree with, and that is what has made this whole thing toxic. It's also just easy to pick on civil servants because they can't speak up and speak back. As somebody who has studied youth for a long time, I feel like I'm watching the same dynamic of “We can lambast and mock teenagers” because they don't get a voice. Why is this?

Q. Is there a question I didn’t ask that you wished I had?

A. One of the arguments that I make in the book is around Jenga politics. I use Jenga as a metaphor intentionally. It’s the wooden game where we take out pieces of a tower, and we make it weaker, and then we put the the piece on top, and make the whole thing even wobblier, and we go back and forth, and one person will end up getting blamed for making the tower fall but we all lose. We all contributed to the loss of it. I use this metaphor to talk about where we are at right now in our approach to our systems because we have been pulling out pieces of our democracy in critical ways over and over again.

We are all ready to blame whoever makes the system fall, but we all have to take responsibility to actually protect that system. It starts with understanding how that system works. The civil servants are trying to keep it from falling over, and I commend them. But they can't do it alone, and so it's really imperative both that our politicians understand how weak and wobbly things are, but also that our public does.

It's not just about whichever elected official is in power that we don't like. It is actually something that we've contributed to collectively, and we can only repair it collectively. It's a matter of calling out to people and saying, “We can all play a role in repairing this. We can all work to make the trust in these systems more functional,” but it starts with us paying attention. Often, we don't pay enough attention as a public, but a democracy requires an informed citizenry. My plea to everybody is to really think about how we can be more collectively informed and protect these systems before it's too late.

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Mediation agency finalizes rule allowing denial of arbitrator requests

Erich Wagner — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:49:38 -0400

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service finalized new regulations this week implementing its controversial April policy change to decline to fulfill unions’ request for arbitrators to hear grievances filed against agencies where President Trump has purported to ban collective bargaining.

For decades, FMCS, which provides arbitrators and mediation services in both federal and private sector labor disputes alike, has served as a purely ministerial agency, issuing arbitrators—or panels of potential arbitrators—to parties within the federal government, whether a request was made jointly between the parties or unilaterally. Questions relating to whether a particular complaint is arbitrable had been left to the individual arbitrator to decide, with appeals of their decision going to the Federal Labor Relations Authority.

But earlier this year, FMCS abruptly halted the processing of arbitrator requests from some unions implicated in President Trump’s two executive orders that collectively strip the collective bargaining rights from two-thirds of the federal workforce.

The agency said it developed a new policy to no longer appoint arbitrators for grievances at agencies named in the two edicts in response to agencies like the Veterans Affairs Department, who told FMCS it refused to participate in arbitrations due to the executive orders. But since its implementation last spring, unions have argued that questions like whether grievances involving an agency named in Trump’s union EOs are still arbitrable should be for arbitrators and the FLRA to decide.

In final regulations, set for publication in the Federal Register Thursday, amending an interim final rule issued in August, FMCS continued to insist that the withholding or delay in appointing arbitrators in these cases do not weigh in on their underlying arbitrability.

“The threshold inquiry concerns a different question: whether FMCS, an agency of the executive branch, may lawfully take the administrative action requested of it,” FMCS wrote. “That question arises where a court has stayed or enjoined the arbitration or the obligation to arbitrate; where the president has excluded the responding agency from chapter 71 [of Title 5], the agreement has been terminated, and the agency has, as the president directed, terminated its participation in the proceeding; or where part 1404 [of FMCS regulations] requires joint authorization for the service requested. None of those is a question of whether the grievance is arbitrable under the parties’ agreement.”

In response to the five comments it received on the regulation, of which all were opposed, FMCS said it did make some revisions to better clarify that its inquiry into a disputed arbitration request is limited to whether it “may lawfully provide the requested service,” as well as that an agency’s lack of participation or contention that a particular grievance is meritless or otherwise not arbitrable does not “by itself” establish that FMCS should not issue an arbitrator in the case.

But Suzanne Summerlin, an independent labor attorney who penned comments opposed to the rule on behalf of the Federal Worker Alliance, a consortium of federal employee unions, said that while she appreciates the “improvements” to provide better guardrails for the new policy, FMCS’ rule still glosses over the fundamental conflict: that longstanding FLRA and Supreme Court precedent both state that parties to an expired or terminated collective bargaining agreement still must participate in grievances that arose prior to its cancellation.

“Many of these grievances that we’re talking about arose during a period of time before the EO was in effect and before agencies terminated their contracts,” she said. “The question is that once the EO happened, did that extinguish [the ongoing grievance] litigation, and the answer to that is no. This isn’t novel—contracts are routinely enforced after they expire over events that occurred during their effect. The problem with these regulations is that they treat a grievance over an employee suspension in 2024 the same as one filed yesterday.”

A lawsuit filed by four federal employee unions in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., against FMCS seeking to roll back the policy change remains pending after the unions filed a motion for summary judgment in their favor last week.

And unions and agencies across government continue to wait for a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on whether unions can challenge the constitutionality of Trump’s union orders directly in federal court or if they must first channel them through administrative avenues, now 10 months since oral arguments were held last December.

Summerlin joked that between FMCS’ final rule and renewed reports that the FLRA has begun dismissing cases involving agencies named in Trump’s EOs for lack of jurisdiction, the administration is making unions’ argument for them.

“This is precisely what the unions have been arguing in the courts,” she said. “They’ve been saying that there’s no way that arbitrators, the FLRA and FMCS should be determining these rights when you’re talking about the president’s EO, because he has control over most of these agencies,” she said. “They’re no longer really independent after Trump v. Slaughter. And that’s key to the channeling question currently before the courts: it’s just impossible to get relief here.”

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OPM touts ‘hire-palooza’ event for early-career employees

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 18:51:38 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management is hosting a virtual hiring fair on Thursday as part of Director Scott Kupor’s push to bring more early-career workers into the civil service.

“I’ll call it a hire-palooza for lack of a better word,” Kupor said on The Charlie Kirk Show, a podcast that was previously hosted by the slain conservative activist. “We’re going to have 16 agencies who are literally going to use an online campaign and do online interviews with folks, and we’re going to make job offers on the spot on Oct. 29.”

In response to questions from Government Executive, an OPM spokesperson clarified that the event is only for applicants who are already going through the hiring process.

“The purpose of the hiring fair is to coordinate across agencies to complete virtual interviews and initiate job offers for early career positions across the country,” they said in a statement.

The spokesperson added that the event supports OPM’s goal of recruiting more than 30,000 early-career employees into the federal workforce. In fiscal 2027 guidance released this summer, the federal government’s HR agency set a governmentwide target that at least 33% of external hires be in the early stages of their careers.

Hey early career folks, you're not going to find your dream job doomscrolling in the comments section. But you might at the federal government's Oct 29 hiring fair. Join https://t.co/eCzJQlN0Cr and be part of the 30,000+ early-career Americans to join the government this year!
— Scott Kupor (@skupor) October 26, 2026

The Partnership for Public Service, a good government group that has been critical of the Trump administration’s federal workforce reforms, argued that OPM hasn’t publicized information that would be integral for potential hires to be able participate in the upcoming fair.

“Hiring fairs can help bring early career talent into federal service, but only if participants know who is being recruited, for which positions and what’s expected of them. So far, OPM has said little about why the event is limited to people already in the hiring process, which hiring authorities agencies will use or how skills-based assessments are integrated,” said Jenny Mattingley, the nonprofit’s vice president of public policy and stakeholder engagement, in a statement to Government Executive. “Rebuilding candidates’ trust in the civil service as a stable career path after almost two years of widespread federal workforce cuts requires more transparency than what’s being provided.”

During Kupor’s interview on The Charlie Kirk Show, co-host Blake Neff complained that the "[The bureaucracy] is filled up with so many committed ideologue career people, and we need people who have a conservative disposition to be in the federal government because they can stop that from happening.”

Kupor responded that that was a “fair point” and added: “Fundamentally, we need people who love this country, who believe in the Constitution and who are saying ‘Hey, look, I actually want to be part of the solution to the problems.’”

In recent weeks, the OPM director has been visiting college campuses as part of a recruitment tour, and he is occasionally joined by conservative influencers, such as billionaire Joe Lonsdale and commentator Benny Johnson.

Kupor has sought to bring more young people into government, as they are underrepresented in the federal workforce. The Biden administration also prioritized recruiting early-career workers for the same reason.

While OPM is currently spearheading a hiring push, the Trump administration last year pushed out hundreds of thousands of civil servants as part of an effort to downsize the federal workforce, including by firing thousands of newly hired and promoted employees who were still in their probationary periods.

From September 2024 to January 2026, the percentage of feds younger than 30 fell from 8.9% to 7.9%. The Partnership attributed this to the probationary firings, as they impacted many early-career employees.

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Judge: ‘Article II’ firings violate separation of powers, civil service law

Erich Wagner — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 10:31:41 -0400

A federal judge on Monday ruled that the Trump administration’s 2025 firing of former Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey violated the constitutional separation of powers and federal civil service law, setting a marker ahead of other litigation challenging a rash of so-called “Article II” firings.

Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, was fired abruptly in 2025. Though her status as a career federal employee to the civil service protections laid out in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act and 1990 Civil Service Due Process Amendments afforded her with a rationale for her termination, as well as advance notice, the opportunity to respond and have representation through said proceedings, she was instead removed immediately, for the stated reason of “Article II” of the Constitution.

In her case, the Trump administration has asserted an expansive view of presidential removal authority, in Comey’s case arguing both that the attorney general has unfettered authority to remove federal prosecutors and that a recent Supreme Court decision opened the back door for plenary removal of inferior officers—federal workers with a high degree of power but who are supervised by presidential appointees. Opponents have criticized the latter argument as mistaking “dictum,” a term for when a judge describes something in passing, for precedent.

In a 55-page decision, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman found that Comey’s removal “indisputably” violated federal civil service law, and ordered the government to furnish five months’ worth of back pay to make her whole for the time between when she was terminated until when she started a new job last December.

“Defendants’ argument that Article II bars Congress from regulating the removal of AUSAs flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent, rooted in the text of the Appointments Clause, holding that Congress may generally restrict the removal of ‘inferior officers,’” Furman wrote. “Defendants’ contention that recent Supreme Court decisions have fatally undermined that precedent is not one that this court, as a lower court, may accept. It is also without merit. Indeed, to accept defendants’ argument would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this nation’s constitutional system.”

Furman said Comey’s position as a career federal prosecutor falls well within longstanding Supreme Court precedent allowing Congress to restrict the removal of inferior officers and federal employees.

“In short, for nearly two centuries, the Supreme Court has recognized that Congress may, consistent with Article II of the Constitution, regulate and limit the removal of inferior officers,” he wrote. “In fact, the Supreme Court has never in its history found unconstitutional a congressionally imposed restriction on the removal of an inferior officer who answers, as AUSAs do, to a principal officer removable by the president at will.”

The decision in Comey’s case marks the first in a string of cases involving former Justice Department employees that have worked their way through the federal judiciary since last year. Former U.S. Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer sued last month over her own termination, following months of delays by the Merit Systems Protection Board, Jackler v. MSPB involves the removal of immigration judges, who appealed MSPB’s decision to relinquish jurisdiction over their and other Article II firing cases. Oral arguments in the latter case are scheduled for December.

In a statement, Comey’s attorneys—Ellen Blain, Nicole Gueron, Deepa Vanamali and Margaret Donovan—applauded the judge’s decision.

“This hard-earned victory belongs to Ms. Comey, to all civil servants, and to all fighting for the rule of law,” they said. “[This] decision reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances: the president is not above the law.”

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Bureau of Prisons seeks another shot at ending union contracts

Erich Wagner — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 16:56:50 -0400

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons this week asked a federal judge to clarify whether a preliminary injunction blocking the agency from terminating its union contracts allows management to propose a new justification for the action.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Vernon Oliver issued a court order reinstating the American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison Locals’, ruling that BOP Director William Marshall offered two contradictory reasonings in his September 2025 implementation of President Trump’s executive order banning collective bargaining for most federal workers: the official notice, which mirrored the president’s national security determination, and a message to employees in which he described AFGE as not the “kind of union” he supports.

But a week later, amid reports that the agency was in “open defiance” of the injunction, BOP management announced that it had issued a new termination notice and rescinded Marshall’s 2025 message to employees. Last week, Oliver nullified that order, ruling that management improperly engaged in “self help” rather than asking the judge to modify or rescind the injunction, but stopped short of the union’s call for leadership to be held in contempt.

In response, on Tuesday BOP asked Oliver to either clarify that his order permits the agency to move forward with its new termination notice, or modify the order to reflect it. Attorneys for the agency said that while the injunction mandates management honor the CBA for its agreed upon term,” a new justification requires new judicial analysis under the Administrative Procedure Act.

“The October 2026 rescission of the prior termination and messaging and attempted re-termination decision addresses the court’s prior concerns with the September 2025 termination and specifically explains hat to the extent the director’s September 2025 message (or any other communication) stated or implied that the termination of the CBA was not for the purposes related to Executive Order 14251, such statements or implications were rescinded,” the attorneys wrote. “The October 2026 decision on proposed re-termination also includes a thorough analysis of the impact of collective bargaining on BOP’s ability to execute its national security mission.”

BOP’s move to get the legal go-ahead to terminate its CBAs again comes as union officials bemoan continued “feet dragging” by management on the reimplementation of those contracts. AFGE CPL-33 President Brandy Moore White said she has seen a mix of compliance and non-compliance from across the agency’s around 120 correctional institutions, with most bright spots coming in the form of token gestures rather than the restoration of workplace policies.

“Some regions seem like they’re somewhat complying, but others not so much,” she said. “My overall view is that they’re trying to appease us with official time, and a few little things like access to disciplinary hearings. But the big ticket times, like compressed work schedules, I haven’t seen much of that come back yet.”

Aaron McGlothin, president of AFGE Local 1237, which represents employees at Federal Correctional Institution Mendota in rural California, said he has encountered nothing but stonewalling from Acting Warden E. Gutierrez and labor-management staff.

“It’s been three weeks and two different orders by the judge, so why are you dragging your feet?” he said. “All I ever hear is, ‘We’ll have to get back to you.’ Our staff is so fed up with being spun, with being lied to, and being treated like just dogshit.”

Prior to the CBA termination last year, policies like compressed work schedules, in which an employee elects to work four 10-hour shifts per week rather commute five days a week, were a lifeline for a workforce that largely commutes from an hour away or more to the prison. McGlothin said its absence is hurting workers’ morale and wallets simultaneously.

“The staff are begging me to form a protest and start a picket line outside, to show that management’s not working in good faith and they refuse to obey the letter of the law,” he said. “With this compressed work schedule thing, the cost of gas around here is almost $7 per gallon here now, and [with the end of retention incentive payments] last year, we’ve lost 15% of our pay. We can barely make ends meet.”

In a filing opposing BOP’s request for an expedited briefing schedule on its request, the union said it is preparing an amended complaint that would incorporate the agency’s actions over the last month. The agency must file a report with the court detailing its effort to comply with the injunction by Oct. 28.

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The legal fight over the public service student loan forgiveness overhaul may be over

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 16:14:55 -0400

The Trump administration dropped its appeals in a pair of lawsuits challenging the Education Department’s overhaul of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which critics argued would enable officials to block organizations from participation based on political differences, leaving in place court decisions that prevented the changes from taking effect.

“Countless essential workers rely on this program, and weaponizing it for political purposes would hurt not just these workers but the communities they serve,” said American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees President Patrick Moran in a statement. “We’re glad the administration is now following the law and abandoning this illegal scheme.”

The Education Department in 2025 issued a proposed rule to block employers from receiving PSLF benefits if the secretary deems the organization engages “in activities with a substantial illegal purpose.” The program forgives the balances on certain federal student loans for individuals employed by government or not-for-profit organizations after 10 years.

In response, a coalition of cities, nonprofits and unions filed a lawsuit, arguing that the rule amounted to the Trump administration trying to hurt organizations they’re ideologically opposed to, particularly those that serve diverse communities, migrants or trans youth.

District Judge Myong J. Joun sided with the plaintiffs in June, deciding that Education’s rule violated the First Amendment and that department officials exceeded their authority in promulgating it. The same day, District Judge Amir H. Ali also ruled in a similar lawsuit brought by a different group of nonprofits that the regulation should be vacated.

While the Trump administration appealed both decisions, lawyers for the government and respective plaintiffs submitted agreements on Wednesday to dismiss both appeals.

“The scheme by [Secretary] Linda McMahon to try to hurt public service workers is illegal on its face and was slapped down by a federal judge months ago,” said Winston Berkman-Breen — the legal director of Protect Borrowers, one of the organizations that represented the former plaintiffs — in a statement. “It’s good that Trump’s lawyers gave up their fight and bowed to reality.”

Education referred questions about the case to the Justice Department. The DOJ declined to comment.

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DOGE’s layoffs took a toll on Black women. The effects are still being felt

Lottie Joiner, MindSite News — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 13:16:30 -0400

Darnese Foster remembers the day she learned she was fired from her federal government job.

“I was off that Friday, which was Valentine's Day. Then that Monday was the holiday,” said Foster. “I went to log in that Tuesday, I couldn't get in.”

Foster thought her password had expired and needed to be reset. She called the help desk to submit her request. Then someone from the IT department called her back.

“He said, 'You didn't get a phone call from your supervisor?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well, unfortunately, your name was on the list of names that was denied access.’ I didn't know what that meant. I called my supervisor. He said, ‘Well, let me call you back. Let me talk to (the IT) supervisor to see what's going on.’”

Later that day, they both called back to tell her that she was on a list of employees on probation who were being terminated during the mass firing.

Foster’s initial reaction was numbness, then panic and dread. She had a child in private school and rent and a car note to pay.

“I would go in a corner and cry,” Foster recalled.

Now, more than a year after being fired from her position as a grant management specialist in the Department of Health and Human Services, Foster is struggling, not just financially, but to cope: struggling to stay strong, struggling to keep the faith. The constant strain, she says, has taken a toll on her mental health.

“I thought I would have a job a year later,” Foster, 47, said. “The worry of where I’m going to get the money to do what I need to do and how long will I be out of work, it’s mentally draining.”

Black women bore the brunt of the cuts

When Trump eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs by an executive order in January 2025 and empowered Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to gut the federal workforce that February and March, thousands of Black women lost their jobs. But the job cuts did more than just dismantle a longtime pipeline that helped lift Washington, D.C.’s majority-Black community into the middle class; it also gutted the well-being of the Black women who hold up that community.

A recent study by University of Maryland labor economist Brandon Enriquez found that DOGE cuts “disproportionately affected” the federal employment of Black women compared with other demographic groups. The study estimated that while DOGE “did not have statistically significant effects for any other race, gender, education, or age group,” it reduced Black women’s federal employment by 25%.

“At its lowest point in April 2025, employment was almost 50% reduced for Black women, with little effect for other groups,” Enriquez noted, although there was a partial rebound in subsequent months. Given the overrepresentation of Black workers in the federal government, Enriquez concluded that the layoffs increased racial inequality.

In many of the agencies that were targeted for massive staff reductions, women and people of color made up the majority of the workforce, according to a 2025 report by Sarah Javaid for the National Women’s Law Center. Javaid wrote that “while women made up 46% of the total federal workforce in September 2024, they represented the majority of the workforce” in the departments of Veterans Affairs, Education, Health and Human Services, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development.

People of color – including Darnese Foster – made up 46% of probationary workers, according to the report, including 65% of those at the Department of the Treasury, 55% at Housing and Urban Development and at Homeland Security, and 53% at Health and Human Services.

Like some of her federal colleagues, Foster's probation was for two years. After years of contracting, first with companies in the private sector, then with the State Department, Foster had finally landed a permanent position at Health and Human Services.

A single mother of two, she'd been in her job for a year and seven months when she got the shocking news that she had been laid off.

“It was always my goal to try to get into the government,” said Foster. “My parents always said: 'Get with the government, it’s stable. You can grow. You can move up.'”

At its lowest point in April 2025, employment was almost 50% reduced for Black women, with little effect for other groups.

–BRANDON ENRIQUEZ, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

Foster had been excited about her new job and working with her new co-workers. And she was proud that despite struggling with a learning disability and adult ADHD, she'd recently gotten a raise in her pay and job grade.

Her work felt important to her, too. As a grant management specialist, her responsibilities included working with organizations such as hospitals or construction companies seeking government funding. If a hospital wanted new X-ray machines or a therapy facility wanted equipment, she helped them navigate the application process.

“I had finally gotten my dream job. It was devastating to have it snatched from me,” said Foster. “I had things in my life that I was putting in order, and goals that I wanted to do. This is where I was going to retire from.”

At the time of her firing, Foster’s oldest daughter was a senior in college and her youngest daughter, who was 9, was in private school and an avid dancer who took part in competitions. Since the firings, her daughter has continued to dance, but Foster can't afford the cost of competitions.

“I try not to take too much from her because she's 10,” says Foster. “I did keep her in dance, so she doesn't lose all that she's learned, so she won't feel like, ‘Oh, I can't do anything.’”

Foster says she has not been coping well. She received unemployment benefits for only six months. She lost the items in her storage unit because she couldn't afford the fees, and she has struggled to pay for her daughter’s private school tuition.

She feels like she’s in a “sunken place.”

“I’ll drop my youngest off at school and just sit in the car and cry,” Foster said. “What’s next? Where am I going to get the money to keep a roof over our heads?”

For a 2022 study focused on Black women's gender and race-related stress, epidemiologists Meghan Tipre and Tiffany L. Carson conducted focus groups and found that the top stressors identified by Black women were single parenting, Black children's safety and finances. “Black women report higher levels of psychological stress than White women and carry a disproportionate burden of chronic conditions associated with psychological stress,” the authors wrote in the journal Women's Health Reports.

Grieving more than a paycheck

Dr. Raquel Martin, a licensed clinical psychologist who focuses on Black mental health, says abrupt termination can be both a financial stressor and a traumatic stressor, because it's not just about the loss of income.

“It's the sudden loss of predictability and control, identity, community, and even future planning,” Martin says. “There's a significant association between unemployment and increased depression, anxiety, and psychological distress, as well as just life satisfaction overall.”

Job loss is more than just about money, Martin points out.

“When you think about job loss, you often think about money, but psychologically, abrupt termination can create a profound sense of instability, (and) human beings need and thrive off of predictability,” Martin says. “When employment disappears suddenly, people aren't just grieving that aspect of a paycheck, they're grieving a future of a world that they could count on.”

And when demands exceed your resources, Martin adds, the stress can be almost unbearable.

“When an experience overwhelms your ability to cope, and it leaves this lasting impact on your sense of self, safety, and sense of the world around you, that's trauma,” Martin said. “Trauma is not only what happens to you, it's also what happens inside of you, when you're repeatedly forced to adapt to conditions that threaten your safety or your dignity or your humanity or your ability to thrive.”

The way people respond to trauma varies greatly from irritability to depression to becoming sedentary or changing eating habits. Foster said after her job loss, she sometimes slept all day or sat at her desk and scrolled. She also admitted being “a lot more snappy” toward family and friends.

Martin says some people who lose their jobs experience “low pressure tolerance,” which she describes as being really irritable so that every little thing makes you want to “flip a table.”

I had finally gotten my dream job. It was devastating to have it snatched from me.

–DARNESE FOSTER

Black women like Foster who are breadwinners and heads of household may be especially stressed since they are overwhelmed with guilt and shame for not being able to provide at their previous levels. Even though the federal firings aren't something that they brought on themselves, the experience left some, like Foster, shattered.

“Mental health is affected by policy decisions, economic instability, and access to health care and employment protection. The solution can’t be only telling Black women to cope better with the trash circumstances that they didn't create in the first place,” Martin explained.

“We have to ask, what does it mean when the people who are often expected to care for everyone suddenly need to care for themselves?” she said. “What got in the way of them being able to do that in the first place? How can we come together as a community?”

What helps, and what doesn't

When trying to comfort people who have been fired or experienced traumatic events, Martin suggests avoiding statements like “everything happens for a reason” or “stay positive.” Instead, she suggests, ask how you can be helpful: “How are you doing today and what would be helpful for you right now?” or “You don't have to carry this alone. What are some tangible things I can do?”

But it’s also important, Martin says, that people experiencing this kind of stress let others help. She encourages staying connected to community and leaning into mutual aid. If neighbors want to bring dinner or provide a gift certificate, or if relatives want to take the kids to a park, let them.

“I know how we feel about the system failing us, but when it comes down to Black people, the system has failed us for such a significant amount of time we have to remember that the goal is for us not to fail each other and still keep it going,” Martin said.

Foster says she’s applied unsuccessfully for more than 100 jobs since her firing last year. In the interim, she braids hair and has worked as a consultant on political campaigns to make ends meet. She meets regularly with a mental health practitioner and tries to stay upbeat through prayer and affirmations.

Nevertheless, Foster feels like she is failing — failing as a mother, failing as a provider, failing at parenting.

“I feel like I’m almost 50 and I’m way behind. I don’t have a life insurance policy to leave my kids. No savings,” Foster says. “It weighs heavy for me as a mother.”

It’s not only the stress of not having the money to do what she needs to do as a parent, but the stress of having to lean on her 23-year-old daughter and mother to help pay the bills. As she continues to look for full-time employment, she says she is drained by the rejections.

Right now, Foster says, she’s holding it together, taking it one day at a time.

“I do believe in God, but when you’ve been down in life and have had disappointments, it’s kind of hard to keep your faith,” said Foster. “You try to stay strong, but you wonder, when is there going to be light at the end of the tunnel? How long do I have to stay like this?”

Part 1 of a three-part series, FIRED: The DOGE Layoffs Hit Black Women Hard, a collaboration between MindSite News, Capital B, The 19th and The Nation, edited by MindSite News. Reporting for this story was supported by the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship in Mental Health Journalism.

This article first appeared on MindSite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Union seeks new avenue to restore VA contract

Erich Wagner — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 05:00:00 -0400

Just weeks after a federal appellate court cleared the way for the Veterans Affairs Department to declare that its union contracts with the American Federation of Government Employees have expired, the union has filed a new motion it hopes could revive the agreement.

The VA has previously been barred from terminating its union contracts after U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose found the action likely violated employees’ First Amendment rights. But over the summer, the department announced it would let the deals expire on their own in August.

AFGE sought—for the third time—to enforce the preliminary injunction upholding their collective bargaining agreements, arguing that when the VA solicited the union to renegotiate the deal earlier this year, it triggered a clause that automatically extends the life of the current contract until a new one can be ratified. DuBose agreed, and again ordered the CBA’s reinstatement.

But earlier this month, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit found that decision modified DuBose’s original injunction, something improper for a case that has already been appealed. Last week, the VA declared the contract to be expired for more than 95% of its bargaining unit workers.

In response, the union filed a new motion in DuBose’s court, asking her to issue an “indicative ruling” that would modify her earlier injunction and restore the contract for the remainder of negotiations, but only if the First Circuit remanded the case for that purpose.

In the filing, AFGE continued to argue that the terms of the CBA’s automatic extension provision had been met. Despite the department’s claims that the union failed to begin bargaining within 30 days for the notice for renegotiation, the union said the parties continued to conduct ground rules negotiations until management sought assistance from the Federal Service Impasses Panel last month.

“Defendants’ most recent efforts to avoid the preliminary injunction is their manufactured dispute over the phrase ‘agreed-upon term,’” attorneys for the union wrote. “The court imposed the preliminary injunction for the ‘agreed-upon term’ of the master CBA . . . To effectuate the original intent of the preliminary injunction in light of the First Circuit’s ruling and defendants’ subsequent actions, the court should modify the preliminary injunction to specify that it will terminate when the parties have finished negotiating a new agreement.”

On the same day, the union also filed a national grievance, alleging that VA management engaged in bad-faith bargaining and multiple contract violations.

Attorneys for the VA on Monday filed a response to the union’s motion. Though the document does not address the merits of last week’s filing, it objects to the union’s request for an expedited briefing schedule, noting that a decision on the motion would not take effect immediately and citing attorneys’ obligations in other lawsuits.

“Plaintiffs acknowledge that their motion for indicative ruling, even if granted, would have no immediate effect,” the filing states. “Instead, it would merely indicate to the First Circuit that this court would modify the preliminary injunction if, in the future, the First Circuit were to remand for that purpose. A decision from the First Circuit is not imminent—the parties have not yet finished briefing the case—and the First Circuit is under no obligation to remand before it resolves the appeal.”

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Judge again orders reinstatement of Bureau of Prisons union contracts, but stops short of contempt

Erich Wagner — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 17:10:31 -0400

A federal judge in Connecticut on Friday ordered the U.S. Bureau of Prisons again to reinstate its collective bargaining agreement, ruling that last week’s re-termination of union contracts violated the preliminary injunction he issued last month.

In September, U.S. District Judge Vernon Oliver found that the Bureau of Prisons’ move last year to terminate its union contracts with the American Federation of Government Employees likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act because the agency’s official reasoning was “entirely pretextual.”

But last week, the union reported that several wardens across the federal prison system were instructed not to take action to reinstate the agreements, and at least one employee was denied union representation in a disciplinary meeting in which they were ultimately fired. AFGE’s Council of Prison Locals called for Oliver to enforce his court order and to hold agency leadership in contempt.

The following day, the union reported that some pieces of the CBA were restored on a limited basis—some officials began seeing requests for official time, office space and union representation at a committee meeting approved. But the agency then issued a new termination notice and rescinded prior statements about the first contract cancellation, particularly a blog post from Director William Marshall that stated AFGE wasn’t the “kind of union” he supports.

In a 14-page opinion Friday, Oliver found that last week’s re-termination violated his order, describing the gambit as impermissible “self help.” Such a move would only be fruitful if, as the Biden administration did when it rescinded the “remain in Mexico” policy, the agency presented its new termination to the court prior to implementing it and then requested modification or rescission of the injunction.

“At no point did the defendants in Biden v. Texas seek to disregard a court order,” Oliver wrote. “Instead, they complied with the injunction, despite issuing a new action, and only sought to implement it after moving to vacate the original injunction . . . Here, in contrast, the defendants failed to move the court for amendment, clarification or dissolution. . . Rather than abiding by this order, defendants issued the re-termination memorandum, which purported to terminate the CBA under new rationale.”

But the judge stopped short of granting the unions’ request as it pertained to whether the agency initially “defied” the injunction, and he denied the motion to hold leadership in contempt. Oliver wrote that BOP plausibly raised the notion that “administrative burden” was to blame for the agency’s slow reinstitution of the CBA, and that individual violations of the contract should be handled through its own procedures.

“Individual instances of noncompliance with the CBA, such as failing to allow union representation at disciplinary proceedings or delaying responses to official time requests, are properly addressed under the agreement itself,” the order states. “The CBA has an extensive grievance process for managing individual complaints of noncompliance. Those concerns are properly addressed under the CBA—not by this court.”

In a statement Friday, Council of Prison Locals President Brandy Moore White applauded the judge’s ruling and urged management to comply.

“The employees we represent work in some of the most challenging and dangerous conditions in federal service, and their union contract gives them a collaborative way to speak out when their safety or the safety of the public is in jeopardy,” White said. “Our members deserve nothing less than full compliance with the court’s decision, and we will keep fighting for our members to ensure the safety and security of the workers we represent.”

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VA allows union contract to expire for most employees

Erich Wagner — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:06:45 -0400

The Veterans Affairs Department this week told employees that it has let its collective bargaining agreements with the American Federation of Government Employees expire, weeks after a federal appeals court ruling stayed an order requiring management to honor the deal amid negotiations for a successor deal.

As part of its efforts to implement President Trump’s executive order banning collective bargaining for most federal workers on national security grounds, the VA had sought for months to terminate its union contracts, including two instances where the cancellation was blocked in court.

In July, the VA announced that it would let the contract lapse upon its scheduled Aug. 8 expiration date. AFGE officials argued that when the VA last spring requested to begin negotiations on a successor agreement, it triggered a clause in the CBA that extends its provisions indefinitely until those negotiations are complete.

But VA management said the union failed to come to the bargaining table within 30 days, negating that provision. Union officials, conversely, argue the ground rules negotiations they engaged in throughout that 30-day window meet the clause’s requirements. U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose agreed and again halted the contract’s termination, but a three-judge panel found that decision improperly modified the scope of her original injunction, allowing the department to proceed.

In a message to employees Tuesday, obtained by Government Executive, VA management pitched the removal of AFGE as an opportunity to improve communication within the department.

“Employees and managers can more freely engage in open communications to improve the organization,” the message stated. “You may also see changes to some of the processes and procedures that were previously contained in the now-expired AFGE collective bargaining agreement. Managers have been directed to exclusively follow VA policy for all matters, including, but not limited to, promotions, alternative work schedules, details, hours of work, telework and leave usage . . . You are encouraged to discuss all workplace matters directly with your supervisor.”

And in guidance from the department’s Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer, the department said it would maintain portions of the expired CBA, albeit only for its police officers, firefighters and security guards—jobs exempted from Trump’s executive order. Specifically, management said it would preserve only contract articles pertaining to conditions of employment, and disregard provisions governing non-mandatory subjects of bargaining.

Most VA workers will also lose their Weingarten right to have a union representative present during disciplinary proceedings or other formal discussions, something department first responders will retain.

Similarly, the department will continue to provide union office space in facilities with exempt employees, primarily VA medical facilities. But employees banned from collective bargaining may only enter union office space while off duty.

Management also said that while it is ending its participation in any grievance proceeding or case before the Federal Labor Relations Authority involving “non-exempt employees,” it will continue to participate in cases involving exempt workers, and it will seek to carve non-first responders out of any cases involving a mix of employees.

“If the underlying grievance covers or appears to cover both exempted employees and non-exempted employees, VA should continue to participate in the grievance and arbitration procedure only to the extent it covers exempted employees, but continue to raise EO 14251, the CBA expiration, and all related arguments/positions) . . . at every stage of the grievance and arbitration procedure,” VA wrote. “Further, if the matter involves both exempted employees and non-exempted employees, VA should request the matter be held in abeyance until the litigation related to EO 14251 and VA’s implementation thereof is resolved.”

In a blog post this week, AFGE said it will continue to fight for the restoration of its contract for all VA bargaining-unit employees, and that it is examining potential next steps.

“Notably, the First Circuit [Court of Appeals] did not sanction the VA’s interpretation of the Duration of Agreement article, nor did it give the VA permission to re-terminate the CBA,” the union wrote. “[Our] fight is far from over. We will take every action to defend our contract and the rule of law. The court has not ruled on the underlying issue in this case, which is whether VA Secretary Doug Collins has the right to strip more than 300,000 VA employees of their voices at work.”

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HHS scraps disability accommodations over missing paperwork. Employees say they have receipts

Jory Heckman — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 10:41:50 -0400

The Health and Human Services Department, with a single email, is closing out accommodation requests from employees with disabilities or medical conditions.

Several HHS employees told Government Executive that the department administratively closed out their reasonable accommodation requests over failing to provide supporting medical documentation within 20 calendar days.

Impacted employees, however, shared evidence that they submitted their medical documentation before the deadline. One employee said she was granted an extended deadline to provide their medical records, but still had her RA request closed out.

“To date, the Reasonable Accommodation Program (RAP) has not received the information requested to support your request for a reasonable accommodation,” HHS wrote in Sept. 21 email obtained by Government Executive. "Because this information is necessary to evaluate your request and continue the interactive process, we are unable to proceed with processing your request. Accordingly, your reasonable accommodation case will be administratively closed.”

The email states that any interim accommodations employees had in place while their RA requests were pending “will also cease.”

“This administrative closure is based solely on the absence of the information necessary to evaluate your request and does not constitute a denial or determination on the merits of your request for reasonable accommodation,” HHS wrote.

An HHS spokesperson said in a statement that if a “request is verified to have been closed in error due to documentation having been received prior to the 20 day timeline, then those cases will be corrected accordingly.”

Many employees have waited months – or about a year, in some cases – for HHS to process their reasonable accommodation requests. HHS faces a backlog of thousands of accommodation requests.

In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave employees 20 calendar days to submit medical information supporting their accommodation requests – even if they had already done so. Employees at the National Institutes of Health said they received a similar notice.

A CDC employee with degenerative arthritis said she first submitted her reasonable accommodation request in early 2025. She said CDC first requested medical documentation from her in August 2026. After dealing with delays from her doctor, she said the agency granted her an extended deadline, allowing her to submit documentation by mid-September.

Despite providing the necessary documentation, she said CDC administratively closed out her reasonable accommodation in late September. She said her condition has worsened now that she is required to report to the office full-time.

“When we were forced to return to the office full time in February [2025], I suffered steadily worsening knee pain, until the point where the pain was so severe that I could literally not bear to walk on it,” she said. She said she condition worsened to the point that she required surgery.

“I might have eventually had it due to my underlying condition, but I believe that it was significantly accelerated by the requirement to return to office full time,” she said.

A second CDC employee received the same message about the agency closing out their reasonable accommodation request – even though they submitted the required medical documentation.

“People are absolutely livid,” the second CDC employee said.

An NIH employee also said their reasonable accommodation request was administratively closed out.

A second NIH employee said she was already working with an HHS reasonable accommodation coordinator to submit her medical documentation, when she got a separate unsigned email from the department’s Human Capital Accountability (HCA) directorate with conflicting deadlines.

“Because I had already been given instructions and a deadline by my assigned coordinator, I was suspicious of this duplicate request,” she said.

She said she emailed the Human Capital Accountability (HCA) directorate to clarify the situation, but did not receive a response. She said her RA coordinator told her to disregard the email she received from HCA.

“Whether this is intentional or the result of a deeply dysfunctional process, the effect on employees is the same: people seeking disability accommodations are receiving overlapping or confusing directives, being placed under strict deadlines, and then waiting while their attempts to comply or obtain clarification go unread,” the NIH employee said.

Yolanda Jacobs, president of AFGE Local 2883, which represents CDC headquarters employees, said the decision to close out many RA requests was “a deliberate choice to clear the backlog without taking meaningful action to support workers.”

“What’s clear is that HHS leadership has no real solution to properly work through the backlog of thousands of unresolved accommodation requests, nor are they making any attempts to provide a solution,” Jacobs said.

Linnet Griffiths, a former senior advisor to CDC’s chief operating officer and equal employment opportunity director at CDC and HHS, who left the agency in April 2025, said that employees who can prove they submitted medical documentation should be able to file an appeal.

"This use to not be a problem because all documentation was submitted through the RA secure system. I’m not sure what they are using now," Griffiths said.

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Bureau of Prisons re-terminates union contracts despite court order

Erich Wagner — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 18:22:57 -0400

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons terminated its union contracts for the second time Thursday, just two days after the American Federation of Government Employees called upon its leadership to be held in contempt over failure to comply with a court order restoring the agreements.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Vernon Oliver ordered that BOP reinstate its collective bargaining agreements, finding that the September 2025 contract terminations, conducted under the auspices of President Trump’s executive orders banning unions at most federal agencies on national security grounds, violated the Administrative Procedure Act because the agency’s stated reasoning was likely “entirely pretextual.”

But on Tuesday, union officials reported to the court that they had experienced widespread “defiance” of Oliver’s preliminary injunction. Wardens reportedly told union officials their instructions were to wait, rather than comply with the ruling; one employee was denied union representation at a disciplinary hearing and was ultimately fired after 19 years at the agency.

In a court filing Thursday responding to AFGE’s contempt motion, the bureau alleged that leadership had instructed the agency to reinstitute its CBAs and that it simply took time to wind up those systems—union officials began getting approval for official time requests Tuesday, after the labor group filed its motion.

“Plaintiffs allege that wardens have been told not to comply with the PI and not to work with the union,” wrote BOP’s attorneys. “As indicated above, the BOP avers no such guidance was given by BOP leadership. On the contrary, beginning the morning of September 30, 2026, [Human Resource Management Division Senior Deputy Assistant Director Jonathan] Hemingway describes the focus of BOP senior leadership being on implementation and compliance with the preliminary injunction and remained the focus of bureau leadership until the agreement was terminated on October 7.”

In BOP Director William Marshall’s new termination notice, he rescinds the 2025 termination notice, as well as a blog post in which he said he was cancelling the union contracts because AFGE is not the “kind of union” he supports, though the latter message remains on BOP’s website. He argued that the contracts were “not intended to operate” independent of the federal sector labor rules the agency is now exempt from, and that engaging with the union distracts from its national security mission.

“Maintaining the CBA despite the president’s exclusion order has already caused, and will continue to cause, significant and irreparable harm to the bureau,” Marshall wrote. “These harms include substantial monetary, operational and resource impacts relating to staffing and scheduling, implementation of the First Step Act, staff and inmate safety, necessary infrastructure repairs, adoption of technological advancements and updating mission-critical policies and procedures . . . These monetary, operational and resource impacts directly interfere with the agency’s ability to meet its national security duties and responsibilities, as well as its other duties and responsibilities.”

Other agencies have tried a similar tactic, to limited success. The Veterans Affairs Department terminated its CBA for a second time last March, earning a swift rebuke, and then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was similarly chastised in a case involving efforts to overturn prior administrations’ administrative extension of collective bargaining rights to Transportation Security Administration workers.

In a statement Thursday, Brandy Moore White, president of AFGE’s Council of Prison Locals, denounced management’s effort to cancel her union’s contracts a second time, and vowed to continue to fight the initiative in court.

“Our collective bargaining agreement and local agreements provide essential protections for employees who work every day in some of the most challenging and dangerous conditions in federal service,” she said. “The public should be outraged. These agreements are not simply pieces of paper; they provide stability, due process and a meaningful voice for the men and women who keep our institutions safe. Our members deserve nothing less than full compliance with the court’s decision.”

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Some former federal employees are still struggling to find the right fit

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:12:21 -0400

Speaking outside of a job fair at a Northern Virginia Community College campus on Thursday, Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., said that “a lot of people have landed” since the Trump administration last year pushed hundreds of thousands of employees out of the civil service through layoffs, firings and separation incentives.

“But there's sadly been a persistent subset that has been very difficult to find a job that matches their skill set,” the congressman told Government Executive. “For example, foreign service officers and people that worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development [which the Trump administration shuttered], they have a unique skill — helping children not get malaria, or feeding kids or doing family planning in sub-Saharan Africa. There's not a lot of use for that in metropolitan Washington, D.C.”

The job fair, which was co-hosted by Beyer’s office, the city of Alexandria, Arlington County and several other nonprofits and state and local government agencies, is an example of ongoing initiatives to re-employ workers who lost their jobs as the Trump administration slashed agency workforces.

David Remick, the executive director of the Alexandria/Arlington Regional Workforce Council, said it has been a challenge to provide assistance to former feds, as there is a lot of variation in the type of work they used to perform.

“The positions were a bit all over the place,” he said. “There are some people that could, with some rebranding, move into something different. And there's others that can't.”

Remick emphasized the number of resources available to ex-feds looking for new work, including artificial intelligence-based tools (his office recommends Google’s Career Dreamer) and community support organizations.

“Some people feel a sense of isolation because they're not going into an office every day, and so there have been a number of ad hoc groups just popping up over the year where people can find belonging,” he said.

Government Executive has previously featured FedsForward, an AI-powered website that helps former civil servants navigate the private sector job search, and the organizations Former Gov and wellfed, which offer regular opportunities for ex-feds to connect.

As time goes on, Remick said the workforce council is offering fewer resources specifically for unemployed feds. For example, Thursday’s job fair, while marketed to laid off agency staffers and government contractors, was open to the general public.

Dozens of jobseekers attend a job fair at Northern Virginia Community College Alexandria Campus on Thursday. Two of the recruiting organizations included the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Credit: Sean Michael Newhouse/GovExec

“We still see people in our workshops or webinars, but we're not necessarily breaking them out between former federal workforce and anybody else. It's just — these are the people that we're supporting,” he said. “There was sort of a scarlet letter on some of these [former feds], they felt, because they were in this situation. And it shouldn't be that way. They're still valuable people that bring a lot to the economy, and I've just learned to treat them like anybody else. They appreciate that.”

Beyer has introduced bills to bring some of the pushed out feds back into government service. One would give federal hiring preference to individuals who were involuntarily removed from the civil service between Jan. 1, 2025, and the end of the current calendar year (H.R. 3093), while another would exempt former foreign service officers who were pushed out during Trump’s second term from having to retake the Foreign Service Officer Test if they want to rejoin (H.R. 9730).

While neither measure has advanced in the current Congress, Beyer thinks they could pass if Democrats retake the House and/or Senate in the upcoming midterm elections.

“They're not partisan bills. They're not ‘D’ bills or ‘R’ bills,” he said. “So I think we can get them to the Senate. Getting the president to sign them might be harder.”

There were at least two federal agencies at the job fair recruiting new workers: the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

FEMA has walked back plans to halve its workforce, but the disaster response agency did lose 17% of its staffers in fiscal 2025. And agency officials have argued that they can operate with a smaller headcount because of technological advances.

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Union demands federal prison leaders be held in contempt after agency ‘openly defies’ court order

Erich Wagner — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 17:23:08 -0400

The union representing employees at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons accused agency management Tuesday of “openly defying” a court order to reinstate its collective bargaining agreements and called for a federal judge to hold Director William Marshall in contempt.

U.S. District Judge Vernon Oliver, a Biden appointee, issued a preliminary injunction last week, finding that BOP likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it terminate its contracts with the American Federation of Government Employees’ National Council of Prison Locals, in accordance with President Trump’s 2025 executive orders banning collective bargaining at most federal agencies on national security grounds. Key to that decision was Marshall’s public statement that he made the decision because AFGE is not the “kind of union” he supports, rather than any national security concern.

But a week later, though attorneys for the Trump administration have said the agency has “complied” with the court order, union officials tell another story. In a motion to hold Marshall in contempt and enforce the injunction, they relay reports of wardens across multiple prisons who said they had been instructed to wait, rather than restore unions’ access to their office space or otherwise allow them to resume their representational work.

“On October 1, Jonathan Eperson, president of AFGE Local 612 at USP Big Sandy, reported that the acting warden had told him that the regional director instructed management not to work with the union on anything and to maintain the status quo,” the union wrote. “’At] FCI Manchester, management similarly advised the local union on October 5 that word had been ‘put out’ that management were ‘not to do anything yet.’ Another local president reported to [Council President Brandy Moore] White that his warden said wardens were being verbally instructed not to comply with the court’s order and to ignore it.”

And on Sept. 29, just before the injunction was issued, Marshall met with staff at Federal Correctional Institution Elkton in Ohio and was asked about the potential for the judge to order the collective bargaining agreements be restored.

“I don’t take directives from the court,” Marshall reportedly responded. “I take my orders from the president of the United States.”

One employee told the court that they were called into a disciplinary meeting on Oct. 5, when they were denied access to union representation.

“There ain’t no union,” said the prison’s HR manager. The meeting ended with the employee’s termination.

“These accounts support the conclusion that BOP has continued operating with the CBA terminated, which is contrary to the court’s order that BOP immediately reinstate the CBA,” the union wrote. “The withholding of these arrangements is significant because defendants themselves identified official time, bargaining and union office space as consequences of an injunction requiring reinstatement of the CBA. The continued absence of these benefits, coupled with management’s categorical denials of recognition, proves that the September 2025 termination remains operative in practice.”

Oliver on Wednesday instructed BOP to provide “detailed information” on the effort to reinstate AFGE’s contract by Thursday and scheduled a hearing on the union’s motion for Oct. 13. The Bureau of Prisons told Government Executive that it does not comment on ongoing litigation.

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Social Security ends flexible work schedules, teeing up clash with union

Jory Heckman — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 17:04:51 -0400

The Social Security Administration is ending flexible work schedules for its employees, soon after imposing new restrictions on annual leave and sick time.

Under these flexible work schedules, SSA employees generally worked longer hours, in exchange for an extra day off each week or two-week pay period. Employees on these flexible schedules still work the same total hours as their peers working a standard five-day workweek.

The American Federation of Federal Employees, which represents tens of thousands of SSA employees, said many employees relied on these flexible work schedules for medical treatment or to provide family care, and that removing this option would push more staff to leave the agency.

SSA told its workforce that a consistent five-day workweek “strengthens our ability to deliver the service the public expects,” even for employees who don’t work directly with the public.

Employees received an email on Monday informing them that alternative work schedules would no longer be permitted, starting Nov. 16. SSA employees will be allowed to remain on flexible work schedules through Nov. 13.

Prohibited work schedules include employees working 10-hours days four times each workweek, or working eight nine-hour days and one eight-hour day for a two-week pay period.

“Management was given zero notice, so we are scrambling,” an SSA manager told Government Executive. “Many of us just approved people for new AWS schedules in the last few weeks.” An SSA spokesperson declined to comment further, referring back to the email employees received on Monday.

In the email, SSA Chief Human Capital Officer Florence Felix-Lawson told staff that “all employees will transition to a standard five-day workweek.”

“The American people depend on SSA to deliver on its mission every day, and that mission depends on a workforce that is present and available throughout the week. AWS, which allow employees to complete their work hours in fewer than five days, reduce staffing on the days employees are off,” Felix-Lawson wrote. “The cumulative effect across the agency is significant and impacts our service to the public.”

AFGE’s SSA General Committee filed a national grievance, arguing that the agency unilaterally ending flexible work arrangements amounts to an illegal repudiation of its contact with the union.

The Trump administration eliminated collective bargaining at more than 20 agencies last year through a pair of executive orders, on the grounds that these changes were necessary for national security reasons. SSA, however, wasn’t impacted by the executive orders and still recognizes AFGE. Its contract with the union is effective until Oct. 25, 2029.

AFGE’s SSA General Committee said in a statement that SSA “paints a false picture of an agency overwhelmed by employees with alternative schedules.” The union says public-facing field offices and hearing offices must have a minimum staffing level to be eligible for flexible work schedules, and cap the number of public-facing employees who can be off any given day.

The union said that an “overwhelming majority of employees” already work a regular five-day workweek, and that “a small portion of SSA’s total workforce utilized an alternative work schedule.” Employees at smaller offices, for example, are not eligible for flexible work schedules.

The union argued that these changes “will harm public service by further depressing morale in an already overwhelmed workforce, and that many employees will leave the agency, "exacerbating attrition and further depleting service capacity." About 7,000 SSA employees took voluntary separation incentives last year, bringing the agency to its lowest staffing level in about 50 years.

SSA, along with the IRS, announced in July that employees would no longer be granted advanced annual or sick leave until further notice.

Federal employees are generally allowed to use “advanced” annual or sick leave for 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 essentially borrow from a reserve of leave hours they will eventually accrue.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., led colleagues in denouncing this new policy as a “cruel and unjustified plan that is likely to drive additional employees out the door.”

“Like with advanced leave, many SSA employees utilized alternative work schedules to make time to seek medical treatment and take care of loved ones without loss of pay. SSA’s action will fall harshest on those workers who will have to choose between getting paid or getting care. The cruelty of this move cannot be overstated,” the union wrote.

The union is calling on Congress to pass legislation that expands unions’ ability to seek injunctive relief in unfair labor practice cases. It’s also urging the Senate to pass the Protecting America’s Workforce Act. The bill, which passed the House last December, would restore collective bargaining rights to over 3,000 SSA IT workers and approximately 1 million federal workers.

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Using holiday lights to inform hurricane recovery? Award honors ‘seemingly odd’ federally funded research that brings about groundbreaking discoveries

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 15:53:21 -0400

Miguel Román, the deputy director for atmospheres and data systems in NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Earth Sciences Division, started his career at the space agency with a much simpler title: intern.

“Summer 2003 was a sublime moment for me because I truly saw people walking the halls of this building, and they were literally changing the books of science by making major discoveries at the time by building large flagship missions and pointing them down at Earth and measuring things we had never looked at before,” he said. “Twenty-some years later, I'm sitting in the corner office of that building.”

Román himself has changed science books through his work on Black Marble, a NASA project that provides a near real-time measurement of nighttime light around the world. Its data has been used to support disaster response, humanitarian organizations in conflict zones and as a proxy for economic activity.

Black Marble is part of a trio of winners for this year’s Golden Goose awards, an annual program put on by the American Association for the Advancement of Science that honors “unexpected, seemingly odd federally funded research that ultimately leads to transformative breakthroughs for science and society.” Winners were recognized last week during a ceremony at the Library of Congress.

Past honorees include researchers that contributed to mRNA vaccines, artificial intelligence and GLP-1 drugs.

Black Marble’s quirky origin story is that initially NASA was picking up nighttime lights that researchers couldn’t explain.

“We thought the instrument was broken because the lights over desert areas where we drew all our calibration — very stable sites — were going up and down every year,” Román said. “Up until that moment, we didn't realize that we were seeing the effects of Muslim cities celebrating the end of Ramadan.”

The NASA official said that Black Marble’s life-saving applications started to become apparent during hurricane recoveries, such as Hurricane Maria in 2017 that hit Puerto Rico, where Román is from.

“I was looking at changes in places where I knew the names of streets, and I had walked. If you're a citizen of that locale, and you know what's going on, it carries a different weight,” he said. “We went from curiosity and something a little fun and happy to answering our call to service and having a sense of urgency and taking that seriously as a group, even though we're a science agency. The capability was there. We had data systems. At that point, it wasn't about the science as much as it was also making the data available to the people making decisions on the ground.”

New Orleans before Hurricane Ida in 2021 Credit: NASA

Román added that Black Marble data is increasingly being used by Fortune 100 companies for matters like assessing AI supply chains and insurance decisions.

“NASA built an ecosystem around public value that drives the national economy and national interests,” he said. “We are still doing the curiosity-driven work, but we're also helping eat up the risk that industry may not stomach to allow folks to take on this capability.”

“Scientific research is more than just about the funding; it relies on people”

The Golden Goose awards were founded in 2012 as a response to former Sen. William Proxmire’s “Golden Fleece Awards.” When he was in Congress from 1975 through 1988, Proxmire targeted federal spending that he considered to be wasteful, which often included scientific research funding.

“The idea for the Golden Goose award was to demonstrate that sometimes research that might sound silly or odd or a waste of taxpayer dollars can have amazing contributions to society,” said Joanne Padrón Carney, the chief government relations officer for AAAS.

For example, the other two Golden Goose honorees this year are:

Histotripsy, which can break apart tumors without surgery or heat, that originated with a graduate student, Zhen Xu, trying to quiet noisy lab equipment. The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health and Defense Department, and Xu has since co-founded a multi-billion health company to commercialize the technology.
Sidney Nagel, whose research backed by the National Science Foundation and Energy Department on phenomena like “the ring left behind by a spilled drop of coffee” has led to “applications ranging from inkjet printing and industrial manufacturing to grain silo design and diagnostic techniques that analyze dried blood and saliva droplets.”

Carney is concerned, however, that various actions taken by the Trump administration will stymie future scientific discoveries. Specifically, she pointed to attempts by the Office of Management and Budget to give political appointees more power in approving grants and the president’s proposed fiscal 2027 budget cuts to science agencies: NIH (-12.8%), NSF (-54.7%) and NASA Science (-46.3%). Congress largely rejected Trump’s proposed reductions to science agency funding last fiscal year.

Regardless of whether the administration’s efforts are ultimately successful, she worries that they will still deter young people from becoming scientists.

“Scientific research is more than just about the funding; it relies on people. Our concern is that these young, hopefully aspiring, scientists that may be in elementary school, high school or even college — they may not be considering going into scientific research as a career path because they're seeing the challenges facing the current cohort of scientists that we have across the United States,” Carney said. “Research really relies on people, ultimately, and their curiosity and their drive and persistence.”

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Bureau of Prisons is the latest agency ordered to reinstate union rights

Erich Wagner — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 18:15:16 -0400

A federal judge in Connecticut last week ordered the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to restore its collective bargaining agreements with the nation’s largest federal employee union, after he found the decision to terminate those contracts last year were likely “entirely pretextual.”

The 32-page preliminary injunction marks the latest in a string of rulings that examined not whether President Trump’s 2025 executive orders banning collective bargaining for most federal workers are legal, but whether the agencies complied with the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirement that decisions be well-reasoned when they implemented the edicts.

At the heart of U.S. District Judge Vernon Oliver’s ruling was the fact that when BOP terminated its contracts with the American Federation of Government Employees’ National Council of Prison Locals in September 2025, it told the union in its decision that it was to conform with Trump’s executive order excluding the agency from federal labor law. But in a message to employees and the public that same day, BOP Director William Marshall stated it was because AFGE was not the “kind of union” he supports.

“Director Marshall posted his message that heavily criticized [the union’s] operations and stated that the ‘whole purpose of ending this contract’ was because the ‘union was an obstacle to progress’ and ‘the current contract has too often slowed or prevented changes,’” Oliver wrote. “The letter did not state that EO 14251 required the termination of the CBA. Nor did it mention the national security rationale underlying the executive order . . . Although an agency may have multiple reasons for its action, it cannot offer an entirely pretextual explanation that is undermined by its own contradictory assertions made the same day.”

Oliver noted a laundry list of actions the agency has taken since the CBA was terminated, mostly to the detriment of employees.

“BOP pressured employees not to take sick leave, and in one instance sent a sick-leave abuse letter to an employee who was in the hospital for kidney surgery,” he wrote. “In another instance, an employee who was recovering from surgery was placed on AWOL (absent without leave) status and threatened with termination if they did not return to work. Terminating the CBA stripped BOP employees of the benefit of union representation in these instances, leaving them to navigate disciplinary proceedings without union support.”

Justice Department attorneys had argued both that the agency was acting on behalf of the president, making the termination exempt from the APA, as well as that the act was “committed to agency discretion,” which also would make it exempt from the APA. But the judge noted that the executive orders, and subsequent guidance from the Office of Personnel Management both allow agencies to “choose” whether to terminate a union contract, making such actions reviewable.

“Defendants took affirmative steps to decide whether and when to terminate the CBA: in accordance with OPM guidance, Director Marshall ‘made the decision’ to terminate the CBA, and defendants had the authority to determine when, precisely, the termination was to occur,” Oliver wrote. “Those decisions by BOP and Director Marshall are reviewable under the APA. Accordingly, defendants’ argument that decision to terminate the CBA is unreviewable because they lacked discretion is contradicted by the record, contradicted by other statements made by the United States, and unavailing to this court.”

In the days following Oliver’s ruling last week, the Bureau of Prison has indicated it is “complying” with his order. But it asked for clarification about whether it would be permitted to submit a new termination notice—something that has drawn the ire of judges in cases involving the Veterans Affairs Department and Transportation Security Administration.

But union officials at at least one correctional facility report that management has yet to comply. AFGE Local 1237 President Aaron McGlothin, whose union represents workers at Federal Correctional Institution Mendota in California, said he is still unable to access the union’s office on agency property, and that the agency continues to refuse employees access to union representation or even acknowledge the union’s status as workers’ exclusive representative.

“How can FCI Mendota management claim to respect the rule of law while refusing to honor a federal judge’s order?” McGlothin said in a statement. “This is a direct attack on the law enforcement officers who keep this institution running and protect the public every day.”

The Bureau of Prisons did not respond to a request for comment.

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TSA took away its officers’ chairs. The union isn’t sitting quietly

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 14:43:34 -0400

The American Federation of Government Employees on Monday launched a public campaign to push back on a new Transportation Security Administration policy prohibiting officers from sitting while working at airport checkpoints.

“Our officers screen millions of people a day and they do it right, sitting or standing,” said Hydrick Thomas, president of AFGE TSA Council 100, in a statement. “Nobody who works a checkpoint asked for this. Nobody who flies asked for this. If TSA leadership truly believes standing makes people better at their jobs, I look forward to watching every manager in the building prove it for eight hours straight.”

According to an AFGE press release, TSA officials on Sept. 25 ordered that chairs be removed from travel document check stations because “[m]aintaining a standing posture helps reinforce professionalism, attentiveness and active engagement with passengers” and that the policy change “reinforces both our security posture and our commitment to hospitality.”

But union officials argued that there’s no data to support the assertion that a standing officer, versus a sitting one, improves security. They also reported that the agency has recently asked officers to sign a “Security Operations Pledge of Service and Security” in which employees agree to support “the well-being and morale of our colleagues.”

“That is a punch line,” said AFGE National President Everett Kelley in a statement. “Hospitality is not something you get by making working people stand at a podium until their feet go numb. Respect is how you keep good officers, and respect is how you keep travelers safe.”

TSA did not respond to a request for comment.

The TSA workforce has recently worked for periods without pay across two government shutdowns: the 43-day funding lapse in 2025 and the Homeland Security Department shutdown earlier this year. As a result, many officers quit or called out sick, which led to long lines at airport security checkpoints.

The Trump administration has sought to remove TSA workers’ collective bargaining rights, but a district judge in January blocked its most recent effort. DHS on Sept. 25, however, filed a notice of appeal. AFGE and the trade association for domestic airlines also have pushed back on the administration’s plans to expand the privatization of screening at small airports.

Administration officials contend that axing TSA union representation and increasing airport security privatization would generate cost savings.

Erich Wagner contributed to this report

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Appeals court seemingly OKs VA’s contested union contract expiration

Erich Wagner — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 17:45:28 -0400

A federal appeals court has seemingly cleared the way for the Veterans Affairs Department to allow its contract with the American Federation of Government Employees to expire.

Last month, a federal judge for the third time blocked VA management from cancelling its collective bargaining agreements with AFGE, the latest in the long-running dispute over the department’s implementation of President Trump’s executive order barring unions across much of the federal government.

U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose had previously ruled that the VA likely violated union members’ First Amendment rights when it first sought to terminate the contract in August 2025. A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld most of her injunction and subsequent order enforcing it, though it noted that the court could not force the VA to “comply” with particular contract terms.

In July, the VA announced its intention to end its contracts with AFGE for a third time. This time, the department said it would simply allow the agreements to lapse when they expire in August; the union countered that management had already broached negotiations on a new deal, triggering a clause within the contract automatically extending its expiration date until such time as a successor agreement can be reached.

Dubose again blocked the effort through a new enforcement order last August, but the department appealed that decision again to the First Circuit. In an order Friday, the same three-judge panel that upheld her prior rulings issued a stay halting the most recent order, finding that it modified Dubose’s prior injunction, which is improper when those orders remain under appeal.

“On this score, the defendants contend that the second enforcement order ‘reaches well beyond the original injunction’s scope by imposing on the parties, on pain of contempt, the district court’s resolution of a disputed contract-interpretation question,’ namely, whether the parties’ communications ‘automatically extended the CBA,’” the judges wrote. “That dispute, the defendants assert, is ‘distinct from’ the dispute the district court addressed in the preliminary injunction: whether the defendants’ ‘initial CBA termination was unlawful.’ We agree.”

The three-judge panel found that Dubose’s determination that VA management had triggered the CBA’s automatic extension clause was the type of compliance question they previously warned about when upholding the bulk of her first enforcement order.

“We recognize that there remains an unresolved dispute between the parties as to whether their communications satisfied the CBA’s automatic extension provision,” they wrote. “But that is a function of the fact that the preliminary injunction’s directive to ‘reinstate’ the CBA leaves open potential questions of interpretation of and compliance with the CBA. As we observed in our prior decision, the duty to reinstate the CBA as a binding agreement and a duty not to violate the reinstated CBA in any particular instance are distinct obligations, because an individual breach would not in and of itself suffice to show that the CBA had not been reinstated as a binding agreement.”

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EPA union sues management over contract termination

Erich Wagner — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 17:22:23 -0400

Updated at 10:40 a.m. ET on Oct. 1, 2026.

A union representing workers at the Environmental Protection Agency became the latest labor group to sue agency leadership over the 2025 cancellation of its collective bargaining agreement, alleging that EPA violated both its members’ First Amendment Rights and a law requiring the federal government conduct reasoned decision-making.

The American Federation of Government Employees Council 238 represents around 8,000 workers at the EPA, one of the more than two dozen agencies targeted by President Trump’s 2025 executive orders banning collective bargaining on national security grounds. EPA management terminated its contract with the labor group in August 2025, after a federal appellate court lifted an injunction blocking its implementation upon AFGE locals but before the Office of Personnel Management amended guidance to greenlight such an action.

While efforts challenging the legality of Trump’s executive orders have largely stalled in federal appellate courts, the union’s lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, mirrors other cases that scrutinized agencies’ implementation of those edicts. Success in those cases have come from a combination of discrete alleged First Amendment violations at those agencies, as well whether management has fulfilled its duty under the Administrative Procedure Act to provide a reasonable explanation for its decision.

“Supreme Court precedent makes clear that even if the [executive] order was lawful, a question not raised in this case, and even if EPA was not legally required to maintain a CBA with the union, the agency had to comply with the APA’s reasoned decision-making requirements in terminating the existing agreement,” AFGE’s lawsuit states. “Moreover, under no circumstances is the agency permitted to terminate the CBA in order to suppress protected speech or retaliate against those who voiced concerns over the administration’s policies.”

In its filing, the union accused the agency of waiting to mete out discipline against employees who signed a June 2025 open letter criticizing EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s leadership of the agency for nearly two months until after management terminated the CBA so that provisions protecting employees’ scientific integrity and governing disciplinary procedures would no longer apply.

“They just didn’t want to face any accountability in front of the Federal Labor Relations Authority or a third-party arbitrator, quite frankly,” said Justin Chen, president of AFGE Council 238. “Had this happened with the recognition of our union contract, we would have filed grievances on behalf of all of these people, taken them to an arbitrator and then the FLRA. So there was no accountability in terms of labor standards or employees’ statutory labor rights.”

Union officials said agency leaders continue to chill protected speech by employees, both on and off duty. The agency has begun requiring union officials, who previously would have performed representational work using official time, to request authorization to do union-related work on their own time. Chen said that although he is aware of only one instance when the agency has rejected a request, it has caused friction in otherwise day-to-day workplace interactions.

“The agency has at times taken a nearly limitless view of [union activities] in an attempt to silence speech by plaintiffs,” the lawsuit states. “[AFGE] Local 704 President Nicole Cantello was summoned by agency management and directed to answer questions about a conversation she had during her lunch hour with a longtime friend and coworker on the ground that it constituted a ‘union meeting.’”

Chen described management’s insistence that there is “no union at EPA,” while closely policing union officials in the workplace, is borne of a “Kafkian contradiction.”

“There’s this heightened suspicion; someone’s a local president but we’re also just colleagues and friends with the people in our union,” he said. “Not every conversation is a consultation that would require official time, but they bring it up and try to make an issue out of it. Like, fine, you don’t recognize the union, but why are you attacking us, claiming we’re trying to use official time? I thought we don’t exist in your eyes.”

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the EPA had never denied a union official's request to perform representational work while off duty. Since publication, Chen said he has learned of one such instance.

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‘Nobody knows anything.’ Displaced IRS staff move from one project to another with few details why

Jory Heckman — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Updated Sept. 29 at 3:15 p.m.

Mid-career IRS employees involuntarily moved to entry-level jobs they had no prior experience doing are getting new assignments, as part of the agency’s latest shakeup.

The IRS in February put IT and human resources employees on 120-day details to work in taxpayer services. They were assigned entry-level roles answering inquiries from taxpayers and processing tax returns. The National Treasury Employees Union estimates that about 1,500 IRS employees were placed on these details.

Many of these temporary details to taxpayer services were extended for another 120 days in May, but impacted employees weren’t sure what job – if any – they’d have with the agency in the long-term. Displaced IT employees have been told they aren’t allowed to return to the agency’s tech shop.

That next role at the IRS is coming into focus. IRS employees moved off taxpayer services details are being reassigned to one of three “ONE IRS Readiness” teams.

IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank Bisignano has repeatedly outlined his “One IRS” vision for running the agency more efficiently. Bisignano, who also serves as the Senate-confirmed commissioner of the Social Security Administration, also reassigned many SSA employees from field offices to answer calls to its 1-800 number.

Bisignano told employees in a Jan. 12 meeting that “we should be able to move any talent wherever is the best place,” as part of a “One SSA” strategy.

Joseph Ziegler, the IRS’ chief of internal consulting, described this latest agency reorganization in an email to employees as a “Reporting and Organizational Correction.”

“These corrections will serve as the basis for improved roster management, workload alignment, reporting integrity, and cross-business unit coordination,” Ziegler wrote in an email obtained by Government Executive.

The rollout of these changes, he told employees, “represents a major step forward in strengthening the accuracy and consistency of our foundational data” across the agency’s IT, human resources, and time and attendance systems.

Government Executive reported last week that the IRS asked some on-detail employees to stay in taxpayer services for a third tour of duty. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration is investigating these temporary reassignments to taxpayer services as part of an audit of the agency’s attempts to reshape its workforce.

“I don’t think many volunteered to extend their details a third time,” said one IRS employee who’s been reassigned to one of these new readiness teams. “Everyone’s old details have expired, so we are all starting fresh. I’m happy to finally have something to do.”

Impacted employees have been assigned to one of three readiness teams. It’s not clear what work these teams will be performing or how team assignments have been decided.

“Nobody knows anything else,” the IRS employee said.

“Team A” will be led by Fred Wade, an IRS IT executive who oversaw the agency’s rollout of a modernized electronic tax filing platform.

“Team B” will be led by Gregg Zurmühlen. His LinkedIn page states that he currently serves as the IRS’ director of enterprise cybersecurity operations and standards.

“Team C” will be led by Adela Gresham, an IRS IT executive who recently returned to work after being placed on administrative leave for more than a year.

“After being placed on administrative leave 15 months ago, I was not quite sure if I would or wanted to return to federal service. I was recently given an option and after much prayer, I decided to jump back in to continue the journey,” Gresham wrote in a recent LinkedIn post.

Gresham is one of 50 IRS IT leaders the agency put on paid administrative leave in March 2025. Government Executive confirmed that another IRS IT executive previously placed on administrative leave has been brought back to work at the IRS.

Treasury Chief Information Officer Sam Corcos defended putting these officials on administrative leave. In a podcast interview last October, he said the IRS “had poor technical leadership for roughly 40 years.”

The Trump administration spent nearly $10 billion placing more than 100,000 federal workers on paid administrative leave for extended periods last year, a sixfold increase from two years prior, according to the Government Accountability Office. That spike was driven largely by the administration’s deferred resignation program aimed at encouraging feds to quit public service.

A second IRS employee said he has also been assigned to a ONE IRS Readiness team after he was recently released from his detail to taxpayer services.

“They let a few of us out, and then eventually they released even more people. Everybody was happy to get out. Most of the people who are still there, I don't know if they wanted to stay. You really had to raise some hell to even get out,” the employee said.

The second IRS employee said he’s relieved to be done with his detail to taxpayer services, but he’s not sure what this new assignment will entail.

“As soon as we got back from taxpayer services, they’re trying to send us off for another detail,” he said.

The second IRS employee, who previously worked in IRS IT, said the agency’s tech shop is backfilling the jobs and his colleagues previously performed.

IRS Chief Information Officer Kaschit Pandya said in March that his office planned to hire up to 175 IT employees, after permanently moving 1,200 employees out of the tech shop. Pandya said in February that the IRS lost 40% of its IT workforce and nearly 80% of its leadership last year.

“They hired people to replace us,” the second IRS employee said. “They really just disappeared us and threw us away.”

The second IRS employee described his detail in taxpayer services as “chaos.” He said there was “no clear direction of who was actually your manager,” and that detailees were rushed into frontline roles with minimal training.

“We were thrown directly into these IRS systems and processing tax returns. We had no idea of that – how to do it. The people who had been doing it had been doing it for years.”

The second IRS employee said many full-time taxpayer services employees were “resentful” of detailees brought on to the same jobs, but retaining their old salaries. Detailees were making about two or three times what these frontline jobs normally pay.

“Many of us were [GS]-13s, [GS]-14s, [GS]-15s,” the IRS employee said. “You had people who were [GS]-3s, [GS]-4s and [GS]-5s who were managing you, telling you what to do, and they had no idea of management.”

The second IRS employee said workers placed on details were disproportionately racial minorities, women and people with disabilities.

“The overwhelming majority of these people are black, brown, and minorities who have been just rushed off in this detail,” he said. An IRS official strongly disputed the notion that reassignments were based on demographics.

The second IRS employee said he’s not clear why the agency keeps reassigning him, and why he was removed from his IT job in the first place. He said he chose a career in the federal government over the corporate world because of job stability – but said upheaval at the IRS has challenged that idea.

“What is the point of this? What is the business purpose of this? It's just like DOGE,” he said. “All the savings they talked about, it wasn't real savings.”

This story was updated to include a comment from an IRS official

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FLRA ruling puts ball back in courts’ court on Trump’s union EOs

Erich Wagner — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 17:37:29 -0400

The National Treasury Employees Union said Wednesday that a new ruling from a semi-adjudicative agency bolsters its argument in the fight over whether President Trump can strip wide swathes of the federal workforce of their collective bargaining rights.

Unions have been in protracted litigation over the question since Trump signed a pair of executive orders last year exempting most agencies from federal sector labor law under the auspices of national security. In total, the so-called ‘exclusion’ orders impacted roughly two-thirds of the federal workforce.

While the labor groups have succeeded in some instances of blocking the orders’ implementation at individual agencies, they have struggled to halt the initiative government-wide. In NTEU’s lawsuit, which has languished before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit since oral arguments were held last December, the three-judge panel has publicly grappled with the question of whether unions may directly challenge the executive orders’ legality in court, without first going through administrative channels like the Federal Labor Relations Authority.

The FLRA, which at the time of Trump’s orders was deadlocked due to his firing of former Chairwoman Susan Tsui Grundmann last year, initially responded to the edicts by placing cases involving the unions and agencies at issue in abeyance.

But in a 2-1 decision involving employee discipline at a U.S. Marine Corps facility in Twentynine Palms, Calif., Tuesday, the agency dismissed management’s appeal on grounds that it lacked jurisdiction, due to the Defense Department’s inclusion in the executive orders. It extensively cites the American Federation of Government Employees’ lawsuit challenging the edicts’ legality, in which a Ninth Circuit appellate panel overturned an injunction blocking their implementation, and stressed the decision does not weigh in on the orders’ legality.

“Importantly, the authority did not review the merits of [previous] presidential national-security determinations at issue in any of those cases before dismissing them,” the majority wrote. “Considering the factors mentioned above—including the pertinent precedent—the authority finds it appropriate to take this case out of abeyance at this time, and to dismiss the agency’s exceptions due to a lack of jurisdiction.”

Following the ruling, NTEU submitted a letter to the court Wednesday arguing that the decision reinforces its argument that requiring unions to first seek redress from the FLRA would be time-consuming and fruitless. And it noted that the union in that case could not appeal it if it wanted to, due to restrictions on which types of arbitration cases can be reviewed by circuit courts.

“The union in U.S. Marine Corps cannot challenge EO 14251’s validity in an appeal of the decision because the decision is not subject to judicial review,” wrote Paras Shah, NTEU’s general counsel. “An FLRA order ‘involving an award by an arbitrator,’ like U.S. Marine Corps, is not reviewable by a U.S. court of appeals ‘unless the order involves an unfair labor practice.’ . . . As this decision shows, no FLRA order dismissing a case for lack of jurisdiction will ‘include a substantive evaluation’ of an unfair labor practice.”

The FLRA case is unusual in that U.S. Marine Corps officials agreed with the FLRA that it lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate management’s appeal. And although the AFGE local technically won the case, it is unclear how it can ensure compliance with the arbitrator’s underlying award now that the union is no longer recognized.

FLRA Member Anne Wagner, the agency’s lone Democratic appointee, dissented from Tuesday’s decision, calling it premature, given the litigation surrounding the executive orders.

“I continue to believe that the most prudent course of action is to keep cases covered by the exclusion orders in abeyance until the litigation over those orders reaches a definitive conclusion—including any actions by the U.S. Supreme Court,” Wagner wrote. “Although the majority cites previous examples of the authority dismissing cases based on executive orders that excluded the relevant entities from the statute, the executive orders in those cases were not the subject of pending litigation.”

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