Pay & Benefits
Mailbag Week: Retirement applications and processing
A look at common retirement-processing snags, what causes delays and where OPM’s newer systems fit into the picture.
Oversight
House Dems urge Trump administration to act on health insurance claim denials
Reps. Bobby Scott, D-Va., and Mark DeSaulnier, D-Calif., call on the Labor Department’s EBSA to strengthen staffing, improve data collection and enhance appeals protections as claim denials continue to harm participants and beneficiaries.
Management
SSA abandons planned disability program overhaul expected to cut benefits for thousands
Trump administration officials informed the co-founder of a nonprofit disability advocacy group that a proposed rule — which would have updated decades-old occupational data, in addition to changing eligibility considerations — will no longer be moving forward.
Exclusive
Management
Doug Burgum is charging Interior Department agencies a premium to subsume their employees
The Interior Department's consolidation efforts is coming with a cost to National Parks and other components of the agency.
Workforce
In spite of more public awareness about federal workforce cuts’ impacts, opposition to them hasn’t grown, survey suggests
Democrats and young adults are more likely to report being affected by or knowing someone impacted by the Trump administration’s government workforce reductions.
Workforce
Satisfaction with government services rises, despite recent layoffs and turmoil
The Trump administration has touted some service delivery projects and launched a design initiative, but it has also fired and pushed out thousands of civil servants.
Pay & Benefits
Open Season advice for annuitants
Federal annuitants often don't have the same flexibility as federal employees when it comes to offsetting their health insurance costs, making it important to keep certain strategies in mind when weighing Open Season enrollment.
Workforce
Final Schedule F regulations to describe civil service protections as ‘unconstitutional overcorrections’
OPM officials told agency HR leaders Tuesday that President Trump has Article II constitutional authority to remove tens of thousands of career federal workers in jobs over potential “resistance to policy.”
Oversight
Trump administration resumes funding for inspectors general hub after previously blocking it
OMB’s move to restore CIGIE funding until Jan. 30 comes as the president has already fired or replaced more than 20 agency inspectors general.
Tech
Lawmakers signal support for using AI to prevent veteran suicides in FY26 VA funding bill reports
“There is a significant need to improve early suicide indicators and detection using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies that improve operational efficiency and effectiveness throughout veteran service delivery,” according to a House Appropriations panel report.
Management
Agency reassignments expected as Education takes further steps to eliminate itself
The department, which has already shed half its staff, is not expected to issue any immediate layoffs as part of the overhaul.
Workforce
Lawmakers force House vote on bill nullifying anti-union EOs
A pair of Republicans were the final signatures needed to on a bipartisan discharge petition in support of legislation that would strike President Trump’s pair of executive orders aimed at stripping two-thirds of the federal workforce of their collective bargaining rights.
Workforce
Federal employees face lingering uncertainty as some shutdown RIFs are reversed
COMMENTARY | The continuing resolution approved last week ordered agencies to reinstate some employees who had been laid off during the shutdown, but inconsistent follow-through is leaving civil servants in limbo as January’s deadline approaches.
Management
FAA chief clears normal operations in the skies post-shutdown
The FAA’s safety team recommended ending the restrictions following the end of the 43-day government shutdown.
Oversight
NTEU sues OPM for Schedule F records
The federal employee union said the government’s dedicated HR agency ignored an August Freedom of Information Act request pertaining to which positions agencies plan to convert to the controversial new job classification.
Management
Latest FEMA acting administrator steps down, with no permanent chief tapped by Trump
Current agency chief of staff Karen Evans will become the Trump administration's third acting head of the emergency management agency on Dec. 1.
Updated
Management
Virginia lawmakers glad National Science Foundation headquarters to remain in state
The General Services Administration announcement about NSF's new building did not address when the Housing and Urban Development Department would move into the science agency's current headquarters.
Management
As health costs spike, a sour and divided Congress escapes one shutdown to face another
Few of the divides that fueled the 43-day shutdown have been resolved, and a fractured Congress is on the clock to find a budgetary solution.
Management
Postal Service leadership brushes off calls to pause modernization plan, as financial losses continue
Former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy intended for the U.S. Postal Service to break even by fiscal 2023 under his Delivering for America plan.
Pay & Benefits