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White House space transportation policy calls for integration with air traffic control modernization

Edward Graham — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 17:18:58 -0400

New space transportation policy released by the Trump administration on Thursday looks to build out the infrastructure capabilities needed to rapidly increase the number of U.S.-led rocket launches in the coming years, including by tying the push with ongoing efforts to modernize the nation’s outdated air traffic control systems.

President Donald Trump’s strategy sets a goal of supporting “more than 1,000 launches and reentries” by 2030, largely by prioritizing enhanced commercial sector engagement and increasing the number of launch and entry sites across the country.

Building out this infrastructure, the policy says, will entail the Pentagon and NASA working together to “operate Federal launch and reentry ranges and facilities in a transparent manner that accommodates government and non government users.”

Other relevant agencies will also need to be involved in these discussions, the strategy adds, to develop and publish range schedules that can “maximize efficient use of range resources for commercial users” and “optimize launch capacity.”

To help facilitate more space launches in U.S. airspace, the Transportation Department — in coordination with the Pentagon and NASA — is directed to “implement a plan to integrate space launch and reentry management into airspace and traffic control modernization efforts” and “designate priority airspace for critical space launch corridors” within 180 days of the policy’s release.

Under Transportation’s leadership, the Federal Aviation Administration has been driving the administration’s effort to radically overhaul the nation’s outdated air traffic control systems.

The modernization initiative was announced by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in May 2025 and followed several high-profile airspace incidents, including a deadly crash between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a commercial airliner near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport that January.

While the project includes some brick-and-mortar upgrades at U.S. airports and related facilities, most of the effort is focused on updating outdated air traffic monitoring and communications systems.

The One Big, Beautiful Bill, which was signed into law in July 2025, allocated $12.5 billion for the modernization effort. Transportation, however, called that amount a “down payment” that December and said it would need an additional $20 billion for the initiative.

It remains to be seen what steps will be needed to integrate the administration’s strategy with the air traffic control modernization effort, and whether or not this will have any impact on the project’s timeline.

The FAA announced in December that it awarded Peraton a $1.5 billion contract to serve as the project’s prime integrator, although Politico reported on Thursday that officials within the agency were growing frustrated by the company’s management of the massive systems overhaul.

During an April event, however, Duffy said “we’re on track to have this project completed before President Trump leaves office.”

When reached for comment, Transportation directed Nextgov/FCW to a Friday press release that announced the agency’s request for public comment on where new space launch facilities should be built, as well as how it should go about setting aside “priority airspace” for future launches.

Both Transportation’s request for information and press release, however, did not include any details as to how the space transportation policy would be integrated with the agency’s air traffic control modernization project.

An FAA spokesperson similarly referenced Transportation's release and said the agency is "seeking input on how increased launch cadence can be integrated into the U.S. airspace system."

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include comment from the FAA.

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Unions accuse mediation agency of ‘doublespeak’ in updated lawsuit

Erich Wagner — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 17:16:23 -0400

“Doublespeak,” “internally inconsistent,” and “inappropriate post-hoc justification.”

A coalition of federal employee unions had harsh words for regulations submitted last month that formalized a policy to block some labor groups from obtaining independent arbitrators to hash out disputes with management.

Earlier this year, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service abandoned more than four decades of precedent when it began asking parties about a grievance’s arbitrability prior to issuing a panel of arbitrators for a union and their agency to choose from. An April memo stated that it would no longer appoint arbitrators for grievances at agencies named in President Trump’s two 2025 executive orders banning collective bargaining on national security grounds.

Unions sued to block the new policy, arguing that it violated FMCS’ own regulations, which stated that it would honor requests for an arbitrator “whether joint or unilateral,” as well as federal statute, which stipulates that federal sector collective bargaining agreement must allow for “either” party to invoke arbitration.

But in July, FMCS published an interim final rule changing its regulations to allow itself to conduct investigations and make “limited threshold determinations” regarding its authority to issue arbitrator panels in federal sector grievance cases.

The unions filed an amended complaint last week in its case against FMCS, incorporating the new regulations into its argument. In addition to accusing the agency of reverse-engineering its regulations to allow the April directive, the unions said that FMCS is effectively inserting itself into Congress’ intended review scheme: arbitrators determine the arbitrability of a particular grievance, with appeals of those decisions going to the Federal Labor Relations Authority.

“Under the guise of clarifying its longstanding regulations, the [interim final rule] transforms FMCS from a facilitator of arbitration to a decision-making body, instituting a new ‘threshold inquiry’ to determine whether issuing a panel would violate ‘applicable law, a court order or FMCS’ statutory or regulatory authority,” the unions wrote. “Other than noting that FMCS ‘may request the parties’ agreement, a statutory provision, regulation, court order, written authorization or other information needed to determine whether FMCS may provide the requested service,’ no further details are given regarding the scope and extent of the new inquiry before providing an arbitration panel, nor whether or how a party could dispute the decision made.”

The unions argued that the new regulations’ imposition of a review process at FMCS contradicts the agency’s continued insistence that it does not decide the arbitrability of a dispute.

“FMCS’s own explanation or why this change is needed is internally inconsistent with its insistence that by conducting this inquiry, it is not deciding ‘the validity of any collective bargaining agreement, the merits of any grievance, the arbitrability of any dispute, or the parties’ rights or obligations under any agreement or law,’” they wrote. “FMCS does not—and cannot—explain how an inquiry that calls for examination of agreements, statutes and regulations to determine whether a party has a right to an arbitration panel aligns with regulatory provisions stating that FMCS is not determining arbitrability.”

A scheduling hearing in the case before the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., is slated for Sept. 23.

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Postal inspectors aren’t being pulled away from mail crime investigations for immigration enforcement, IG reports

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 13:39:02 -0400

Several federal agencies have reassigned employees to support the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, but the U.S. Postal Service’s watchdog found in a new report that any immigration-related work conducted by postal law enforcement officers is limited and has a nexus to mail crime.

“We did not observe any Postal Inspection Service resources diverted solely for immigration enforcement activities,” auditors from the USPS inspector general office wrote.

The IG reported that, since the start of Trump’s second term, the USPIS has reassigned nine inspectors (less than 1%) to a Homeland Security Task Force. Based on agency data, however, none of the transfers were solely related to immigration enforcement and often dealt with threats like drug trafficking, human trafficking and financial crimes.

Likewise, auditors found that 39 postal inspectors (3%) in the same time frame assisted with investigations that had an immigration-related component for another law enforcement agency.

“For these investigations, postal inspectors mainly performed address checks for [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and provided investigative support when targets used the mail to traffic drugs and launder money, according to Postal Inspection Service data,” the IG wrote.

USPS OIG’s audit was initiated by a request from lawmakers who wanted to know if “potential resource diversions to immigration enforcement activities” impacted USPIS’s ability to investigate white collar crime.

The watchdog reported that the number of initiated white collar cases increased from 693 in fiscal 2024 to 1,100 in fiscal 2025 and that the number of such cases that were closed or resulted in charges between the two fiscal years marginally decreased.

“This review assessed congressional concerns about the Postal Inspection Service’s involvement in immigration-related activities since January 2025 and did not identify impacts to white-collar crime investigations attributable to resource shifts toward immigration enforcement,” the auditors wrote.

Gary R. Barksdale, the chief postal inspector, agreed with the report’s findings in an attached letter.

“The Postal Inspection Service has not sought, has not been delegated and does not exercise any immigration enforcement authority, and no postal inspector serves in the capacity of an immigration officer,” he wrote.

Trump has fired many agency IGs and replaced several of them with individuals who worked in his first or second administration. The postal IG, however, is appointed (and would be removed) by the USPS Board of Governors and Postal Regulatory Commission.

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Watchdog: NSA’s NDAs don’t comply with whistleblower law

Erich Wagner — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 07:00:00 -0400

The National Security Agency routinely fails to inform employees of their rights under whistleblower protection laws when they sign non-disclosure agreements, the intelligence agency’s inspector general concluded this week.

Although the NSA is not officially subject to the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, Congress has consistently required most of its provisions—minus those relating to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, who lacks jurisdiction to review matters involving counterintelligence and foreign intelligence—to apply to the agency via annual appropriations laws since 1988.

But according to a new report from the NSA inspector general, most of the agency’s non-disclosure agreements lack the required reference to federal whistleblower protections, meaning its employees “may not be aware” of their rights to disclose violations of law or instances of waste, fraud and abuse.

“We identified five unique NSA-developed NDAs. One of the five NDAs, NSA’s Security Agreement, did not include the current required whistleblower provisions but did include language related to whistleblower protections and had some statutory references,” the inspector general wrote. “The remaining four NDAs made no mention of whistleblower protections . . . Additionally, the OIG identified another five agreements that were not titled or identified as nondisclosure agreements but implied nondisclosure obligations and did not include the required whistleblower protection provisions.”

The report comes as the Trump administration considers promulgating a standardized NDA for use across government. The proposal has drawn bipartisan criticism for the potential chilling effect it could have on employees who witness misconduct while on the job, including by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who requested the inspector general’s review of NSA NDAs.

The watchdog also found that the process by which NSA employees obtain access “compartmented information” include more nondisclosure provisions that similarly lack the needed whistleblower protection language.

“The subject matter experts we spoke with explained that individual offices develop their own access agreement brief sheets using a template, and an affiliate’s acknowledgement of one of these electronic brief sheets serves as the nondisclosure agreement,” the report states. “In interviews with SMEs, two opened brief sheets of their own and noted that the required provisions were not present. We reviewed the template and noted that it lacked inclusion of the required whistleblower protection provisions.”

The inspector general recommended creating a process to ensure all nondisclosure policies, forms and agreements include the statutorily mandated whistleblower protection language, as well as assigning the task to an official within the agency.

NSA concurred with the IG’s recommendations and said it planned to assign compliance to the agency’s chief of staff.

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What AI’s workplace adoption means for government agencies

John Breeden II — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 11:23:36 -0400

Most people probably associate the U.S. Census Bureau with the massive effort to count everyone in the country once every 10 years. But Census researchers are hardly sitting around waiting for the next decennial tally. The agency constantly surveys Americans about how they live, work and even play. The resulting information helps government agencies set policy, support programs and track how conditions across the country are changing.

And lately, that changing world includes a lot of artificial intelligence.

In March, the Census Bureau’s Household Trends and Outlook Pulse Survey asked U.S. workers whether they were using AI on the job and, perhaps more importantly, what they were actually doing with it. The results offer a detailed snapshot of how workers are using AI today.

About 55% of U.S. workers said they had used AI for at least one of 11 work-related tasks included in the survey. The most common applications were fairly ordinary. About 37% used AI to search for information or technical help, 32% used it to write communications, documentation or instructions and another 32% had AI help them generate ideas. About 31% used AI to interpret, translate or summarize information while 27% used it for administrative tasks.

In other words, much of workplace AI adoption does not seem to involve building autonomous agents or developing sophisticated machine learning models. People are using it to help with the kinds of things they already do every day.

Many also said it was saving them time. Among workers who had used AI during the previous week, 31% estimated that it saved them one to two hours. Another 15% said they saved three to four hours and 15% reported saving more than four hours.

AI did not save time for everyone. About 10% said it did not save them any time and 3% said using it actually required additional time to complete their work. So, the reported productivity benefits were not universal.

The Census findings cover U.S. workers generally, not government employees specifically. But they raise an interesting question for agencies trying to expand their own use of AI: As employees become more comfortable with the technology, what does practical adoption look like inside government?

I recently moderated a discussion about government AI adoption with government and industry officials that included Pamela McKnight, chief AI officer for Louisville Metro Government in Kentucky. Louisville has taken exactly that kind of approach, combining centralized governance with efforts to get AI capabilities into the hands of employees throughout the organization.

“There has to be an understanding that business will be done differently now,” McKnight said. “It’s not just about educating people about how to use an AI tool, but also identifying a use case within their area and then actually implementing that AI tool into their workstream.”

Rather than expecting a central AI team to discover every possible use case, Louisville has worked to identify employees who are interested in the technology, give them access to training and tools, and encourage those with both interest and aptitude to become AI leaders within their own areas of government.

Louisville's experience offers a government example to place alongside the broader workplace patterns Census measured. Its approach is to let employees identify potential use cases within their own areas, then pair that operational knowledge with access to AI tools, training and support. In Louisville, however, giving employees room to experiment does not mean creating an AI free-for-all, or deploying AI simply because the technology is available.

“You have to have guardrails in place, and we worked very closely with our cyber teams on those, so that is number one,” McKnight said. “And then our office is an enabler. We come along beside them and support and enable them as partners … we train them, we educate them and we show them how to specifically use those different AI tools.”

Another implementation question is which AI tool best fits a particular government task. At another discussion I recently moderated, state and local government officials warned that different AI systems have different strengths and weaknesses.

“Make sure you have the right AI as they are not all created equal and will be better at different things,” said Domain Information Security Officer for the State of Tennessee Brendan Taylor. “And even if you have OpenAI or Mythos, Gemini or whatever, make sure you are using their right product for what you are trying to do. Some are better at security or coding or productivity tasks like making reports. Make sure you are matching with the right solution.”

And while government technology leaders are working through those practical questions, the Census Bureau will continue doing what it does best: measuring what is actually happening.

The Household Trends and Outlook Pulse Survey is conducted every two months to provide timely information about changing social and economic conditions. In this case, it captured a workforce already experimenting with AI in very practical ways. Among workers who had used AI for at least one of the tasks Census measured, 24% said they used it every day during the previous week while another 46% had used it on at least one day.

The survey does not say whether employers should encourage more AI use or what tools they should deploy. But it does provide a useful snapshot of where things stand today: what workers are using AI for, how often they are turning to it and, in many cases, how much time they believe it is saving them.

And for government agencies trying to understand how AI is finding its way into everyday work, that may be one more Census count worth watching.

John Breeden II is an award-winning journalist and reviewer with over 20 years of experience covering technology. He is the CEO of the Tech Writers Bureau, a group that creates technological thought leadership content for organizations of all sizes. Twitter: @LabGuys

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IRS CEO’s call to end advanced leave should be ‘null and void,’ NTEU says in lawsuit

Jory Heckman — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 15:14:34 -0400

The National Treasury Employees Union is asking a federal judge to block a recent IRS decision prohibiting its employees from taking annual leave or sick leave time they haven’t accrued yet.

NTEU, in a lawsuit filed Thursday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, argued that the IRS workforce policy change should be declared “null and void” because it was made by Frank Bisignano, who is leading the agency as its “chief executive officer,” a new title created under the Trump administration.

Bisignano is also the Senate-confirmed commissioner of the Social Security Administration, which rolled out the same prohibition on advanced leave in a nearly identically worded memo.

NTEU wrote that, to its knowledge, “no other agencies besides IRS and SSA have issued directives categorically barring their employees from using advanced annual or sick leave.”

The union, in its complaint, said Bisignano's de facto leadership of the IRS violates the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has interpreted this clause as requiring “principal” officers to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

NTEU wrote that Bisignano “is carrying out the functions of the IRS Commissioner, which is a principal officer, but the President did not nominate him to that position and the Senate did not confirm him to it.”

“Mr. Bisignano has therefore lacked authority for his official actions, including issuing the Directive,” the union told the court.

Bisignano has mused aloud about how unusual it is to be running both the IRS and SSA.

“I don't know that there'll be another person who oversees both of them,” he said at the Government Service Delivery Summit in June. “I also think overseeing both of them is much like running a large company.”

The IRS currently lacks a permanent or acting IRS commissioner or deputy commissioner.

The Senate confirmed former Republican congressman Billy Long in June 2025 to serve as the agency’s permanent leader, but he left after less than two months on the job. Long now serves as the U.S. ambassador to Iceland.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took over as acting IRS commissioner in August 2025, but officially stepped back from that acting role after his 210-day acting term under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act expired in March 2026. Bessent appointed Bisignano as the IRS CEO last October.

The IRS released a statement in March 2026 stating that Bessent “retains the authority and responsibility to perform the functions and duties of vacant Treasury offices that are not filled on an acting basis, and that Bisignano is “successfully leading day-to-day operations and reporting directly to the Secretary.”

“If this type of circumvention of the Appointments Clause is allowed to stand, there could be an executive branch full of CEOs at the helm of each agency, instead of a Secretary or Commissioner — none of whom would go through the Constitution’s process of presidential nominations and Senate confirmations,” NTEU wrote. “That would plainly conflict with what the Framers intended through the Appointments Clause.”

The union also argued that the agency’s new prohibition on advanced leave and advanced sick leave is “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act, “because it requires across-the-board denials of all pending advanced leave requests and because it cuts off any future such requests, regardless of an employee’s individual circumstances.”

An IRS spokesperson declined to comment on pending legislation, but said in a statement that the agency’s advanced leave restriction “aligns with the agency’s efforts to build a high-performing, highly engaged workforce operating as One IRS to deliver a world-class customer experience and aligns to our commitment to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.”

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

The IRS’ Internal Revenue Manual (IRM) instructs supervisors to review each request for advanced annual and sick leave on a case-by-case basis. Guidance from the Office of Personnel Management states advanced sick leave is a “flexibility” agencies can use to help new employees who haven’t accrued much leave yet, as well as more tenured employees experiencing personal hardships.

OPM directs agency supervisors to “use their judgment in reviewing a request for advanced sick leave” and minimize the chances of employees separating from service with a negative leave balance.

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

NTEU wrote that the IRS’ new policy “is harming numerous IRS employees” who had advanced leave requests pending.

“The agency has now summarily denied all of those requests pursuant to the Directive,” the union wrote.

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‘Glaring violations’ of the Hatch Act by senior Trump officials have gone unpunished for months, good government group alleges

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 14:38:05 -0400

A good government group is asking a federal watchdog why it’s taking so long for officials to resolve Hatch Act complaints that the nonprofit has filed against senior political appointees in the Trump administration.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington on Thursday sent a letter to the Office of Special Counsel, which enforces rules that govern the political activities of federal employees, contending that the agency has opened investigations into six senior officials, five of which have been pending for more than 10 months.

Many of the Hatch Act complaints deal with comments made during media briefings and interviews by officials, such as outgoing White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, criticizing democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani when he was a candidate.

Federal employees are not permitted to engage in political activity in their official capacity. For example, the OSC found that Biden Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro and Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley ran afoul of the Hatch Act when they criticized Donald Trump in media interviews ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

“While we understand that financial constraints and abrupt leadership changes by President Trump have challenged law enforcement efforts at agencies including OSC, CREW’s outstanding complaints originate from public interviews and posts that are easily reviewed and assert glaring violations of the law,” wrote CREW President and CEO Donald Sherman.

The organization argued that administration officials will continue to violate the Hatch Act until OSC resolves these complaints. For example, Sherman pointed to Attorney General Todd Blanche’s appearance at a campaign rally for a Republican running for New York governor. Public Citizen, another good government nonprofit, submitted a complaint about that speech earlier this week.

An OSC spokesperson said in a statement to Government Executive that the agency “doesn’t comment on open cases.”

Also on Thursday, OSC announced that it filed disciplinary complaints with the Merit Systems Protection Board against two feds who, despite warnings, allegedly ran for partisan political office and solicited political contributions. Both activities are prohibited under the Hatch Act.

Additionally, the agency touted at the end of last year that it resolved hundreds more Hatch Act complaints in fiscal 2025 than it did in fiscal 2024.

But CREW said this points to a divergence in how potential Hatch Act violations are treated depending on the employee’s rank.

“Ethical compliance cannot thrive in the federal government if the most politically powerful officials are allowed to skirt the law while their subordinates are punished for similar activity,” Sherman wrote.

Earlier this month, the Senate confirmed Charles Baldis, a former GOP Senate staffer, as special counsel, though he’s been leading the agency since spring 2025 as the designee of the former acting chief.

During Trump’s first term, the OSC found that several officials, including White House Trade Adviser Peter Navarro and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, violated the Hatch Act.

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House Democrats want answers on what CISA lost in workforce cuts

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 12:00:00 -0400

Five House Democrats are asking Congress’ investigative arm to examine how significant staffing cuts at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have affected the government’s ability to defend federal networks and critical infrastructure.

The lawmakers are calling on the Government Accountability Office — the top congressional watchdog that audits and evaluates federal programs — to examine the impact of personnel and program reductions enacted at CISA since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, according to a letter first seen by Nextgov/FCW.

The request, addressed to acting Comptroller General Orice Williams Brown, is led by Reps. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., and Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee. Ramirez is the top Democrat on the panel’s cybersecurity subcommittee, where Walkinshaw also serves. Reps. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., and LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., who also serve on the cyber panel, joined the request.

The lawmakers say CISA has lost nearly a third of its workforce “at precisely the moment when our adversaries are accelerating attacks against critical infrastructure,” leaving Congress without a clear picture of which capabilities were lost and whether remaining teams can keep pace with growing cyber and physical threats.

The concerns have grown during the war with Iran, as CISA and the FBI help utilities navigate cyberattacks affecting at least 12 states that some U.S. officials suspect may be tied to Tehran.

The lawmakers are asking GAO to examine how CISA’s workforce has changed over the past five years, including its size, composition, geographic distribution and reliance on contractors. They also want the watchdog to identify which programs were affected by the reductions and what consequences CISA and its industry and government partners have reported.

The letter further asks GAO to evaluate what data CISA uses to make workforce decisions and whether its human capital strategy aligns with its current and future mission needs.

“Little is known about the impact of these workforce reductions on CISA’s programs and services,” the lawmakers write, arguing it’s unclear whether the agency is positioned to replace the skills it has lost.

Nextgov/FCW has asked CISA and GAO for comment.

CISA is now attempting to rebuild parts of its workforce after layoffs, voluntary departures and other personnel actions reduced staffing from roughly 3,300 employees to about 2,200. Acting Director Nick Andersen has said the agency plans to hire about 330 people, while Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said CISA may need roughly 600 additional staff and that hiring could take a year or more.

Walkinshaw previously told Nextgov/FCW that restaffing the agency would be “a very difficult thing to do,” noting that cyber personnel have seen colleagues pushed out and their work publicly criticized by administration officials.

The workforce picture has also been complicated by internal DHS transfers. CISA’s former acting director told lawmakers in February that about 70 agency employees were reassigned to other DHS offices, while just over 30 moved into CISA.

At the same time, the administration’s fiscal 2027 budget request calls for eliminating roughly 870 CISA positions, including cutting staff tied to election security, stakeholder engagement and workforce development. House appropriators have since advanced a bill that would provide CISA with about $400 million more than the White House requested and set aside $31 million for critical hires. The measure has not received a House floor vote, and the Senate has not released its version, leaving the agency’s final funding and staffing levels unsettled.

The cuts were part of the Trump administration’s broader push to shrink the federal workforce, but CISA has drawn particular scrutiny over its past election security work.

That fight dates back to Trump’s first term, when he fired CISA’s first director, Chris Krebs, after Krebs rejected Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. Republicans have concurrently accused the agency of censoring conservative speech when it worked with social media platforms to flag election- and COVID-related misinformation in and around the 2020 race.

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Trump’s FDA pick faces questions about leading the agency

Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 09:00:20 -0400

President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration will face challenges securing Senate confirmation after the committee chairman in charge of that process expressed doubts.

That, however, hasn’t deterred White House officials from pressing for Dr. Heidi Overton, arguing she has the experience needed and that her policy goals align with the president's.

“As Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, Dr. Heidi Overton has spent the last year and a half coordinating an interagency policymaking process with senior officials across HHS, FDA, CDC, USDA, and other agencies to deliver on President Trump’s MAHA agenda,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement shared with States Newsroom on Thursday.

“Dr. Overton has been integral to ensuring that the Administration’s policies are correct, consistent, and grounded in Gold Standard Science, and will play a similar role at the FDA as its next Commissioner,” Desai added. “The White House looks forward to her swift confirmation by the Senate.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., wrote in a social media post on Wednesday that while he respects Overton’s “experience as a physician,” he isn’t convinced she’s the right person to lead the FDA, highlighting her role in a Health and Human Services Department executive order that would weaken vaccine requirements.

“Her lack of managerial experience does not prepare her well for leading a large organization that is already dealing with staffing and morale issues,” Cassidy wrote. “Additionally, Dr. Overton’s active role in last week’s nonsensical vaccine executive order calls into question her commitment to standing up for sound science and protecting children’s health. That alone is almost disqualifying.”

Cassidy, as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has control over whether to schedule a confirmation hearing or a committee vote on Overton’s nomination.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Cassidy was open to changing his mind on Overton’s nomination. He expressed doubts about HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Erica Schwartz before voting to confirm both of those nominees.

But the White House did have to withdraw surgeon general nominee Dr. Casey Means after it became clear she didn’t have the votes to advance out of committee. And Trump had to rescind Janette Nesheiwat’s nomination for surgeon general.

The president wrote in a social media post on Wednesday that he would nominate Overton “to ensure that the U.S. remains the WORLD LEADER for Scientific Discovery and CURES.”

“Dr. Overton was a prestigious White House Fellow in my First Term, is a Board-Certified Physician in Public Health and General Preventive Medicine, and holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Investigations from the Johns Hopkins University,” he wrote. “She is SMART and RESPECTED by all! Dr. Heidi will work with Secretary Kennedy and Dr. Oz to RAPIDLY deliver on my priorities of FASTER Cures, INCREASED American Innovation, MAJOR Clinical Trial Reforms, LOWER Drug Prices, and even more MAHA WINS!”

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Federal job listings provide clues for next set of Schedule P/C conversions

Erich Wagner — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 18:09:05 -0400

As agencies prep for a reported second round of conversions of federal positions out of the competitive service and into the at-will Schedule Policy/Career, experts have taken to reading new job postings as tea leaves in an effort to understand the initiatives current and future scope.

The new job category, ostensibly for “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, and policy-advocating” positions in government, was formally implemented in June, when President Trump signed an executive order converting around 8,000 positions from the apolitical competitive service into the excepted service.

Employees placed into Schedule P/C are effectively at-will employees; they no longer may challenge adverse personnel actions before the Merit Systems Protection Board, and their whistleblower complaints would be investigated by their own agency, rather than the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

But since its initial implementation, it has been difficult to ascertain whom exactly has been impacted by the new policy. Thus far, the only public documentation of Schedule Policy/Career’s scope are the statements of officials, who have said 97% of conversions involved GS-15s or senior leaders (SL), and an appendix to Trump’s executive order listing various job titles by agency, along with a position number that agencies only use internally.

New analysis from the Partnership for Public Service examining more than 130 listings that mention Schedule P/C on USAJOBS, the federal government’s dedicated online job board, has found at least a dozen positions—or nearly 10%—tagged for the new job category at the GS-13 level or below. In some cases, jobs like airport screeners at the Transportation Security Administration were listed as Schedule P/C despite not being listed in the appendix, though the agency told Government Executive those were due to an administrative error and would be corrected.

Other job listings, including for a variety of posts at the International Development Finance Corporation, state that the agency has submitted the position to OPM for conversion into Schedule P/C but had not yet received approval. The Energy Department flagged some of its jobs as “potentially meeting the requirements” for the job category, while three U.S. Agency for Global Media positions are listed as “under review for inclusion” in Schedule P/C.

Brandon Lardy, the Partnership’s data director, said in an interview that a combination of the Trump administration’s “opaque” documentation surrounding the new job category along with the chilling effect created by stripping employees of their civil service protections has created a nightmare for transparency advocates.

“We continue to be concerned as we see this rollout continue to play out, particularly as it seems to be going beyond the bounds of the executive order and its intended scope,” he said. “We’re also concerned about the effect this will have on morale across the federal workforce with the fear of being classified into Schedule P/C and losing their protections.”

Ultimately, Lardy argued that the Schedule P/C tag will hurt federal agencies’ ability to attract qualified applicants to these positions.

“Especially when you take it in the context of the administration’s actions last year, particularly to remove probationary period workers from government, that in combination with these reclassifications and this new appointment type all makes it easier to be fired,” he said. “That does have an effect on who is looking to get into government, either as a new graduate from university or someone with a long career in private sector looking to shift into public service. Either way, someone would be pretty nervous to see that their position could seemingly be reclassified and lose the civil service protections that are often a draw for folks who move into government . . . It’s not a healthy way to recruit folks into an organization.”

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OPM wants to woo young workers. Can internet memes overcome Trump’s cuts to the civil service?

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 17:33:21 -0400

Updated at 10:20 a.m. ET Aug. 21

As the federal government’s human resources agency, the Office of Personnel Management frequently posts information on its social media about subjects like performance ratings and retirement processing.

On Aug. 6, however, OPM shared a post on its X account of an IMAX theater showing a video encouraging young people to apply to work at agencies with the caption: “Learning why you should join the federal government the way Christopher Nolan intended.”

The post is referencing the movie director’s decision to shoot “The Odyssey," his latest box office hit, entirely with IMAX cameras. It also includes a link to a government early career talent webpage.

Public service now on IMAX pic.twitter.com/lq1F8f2UZ4
— U.S. Office of Personnel Management (@USOPM) August 6, 2026

While the Nolan IMAX post might seem random, OPM Director Scott Kupor said it’s a key part of an effort to recruit more early-career employees into government.

“Yes, we're trying to be funny and kitschy and stuff like that,” Kupor said. “But most of that is in service of a strategy, which is, can we actually find the people that we're interested in talking to and convince them to take 30 seconds out of their busy days and hear what we have to say?”

The underrepresentation of young people in the federal government is a longstanding issue that the Biden administration also sought to fix. As officials in the second Trump presidency take their shot at solving the problem, Michelle Amante, senior vice president of government programs at the Partnership for Public Service nonprofit, warned that the president’s ongoing efforts to downsize the civil service could undermine any attempt at mass recruitment.

“When [Gen Z is] thinking about — ‘where do I want to spend my career [and] where do I want to make a difference’ — it's hard to just brush [the last year-and-a-half] under the rug, regardless of what fancy social media campaign you have,” she said.

“Make the federal government feel more approachable and even fun”

Kiki Nyoh, an OPM spokeswoman, said that the agency’s social media presence is driven by a four-person communications team — most of whom are younger than 30.

“We know how our generation communicates because we are our generation, and we’re using that perspective to make federal service resonate with the next generation of talent,” she said over email.

Christina Harbison, a senior digital adviser, shared that a lot of OPM’s social media content is inspired by a stray comment that someone will make in the office.

“We’re always listening for those unexpected ideas and looking at what people are already engaging with online, then thinking about how we can give it a federal workforce spin,” she said by email. “Content that feels timely, light and culturally relevant tends to make the federal government feel more approachable and even fun.”

For example, Harbison said that a recent post with clips of characters from the popular sitcom “The Office” dancing to tout OPM’s transition away from paper to streamline the retirement process originated with Kupor mentioning that he liked Michael Scott, who is the boss in the show.

Skip the paperwork and start your retirement journey online. Find out how OPM's Online Retirement Application can help make the retirement process faster, easier, and more transparent. Visit: https://t.co/a5CLmMaVPX pic.twitter.com/3BbeuqnJE4
— U.S. Office of Personnel Management (@USOPM) July 9, 2026

Kupor, who is frequently featured in these posts, said that he’s always up for participating, even if he doesn’t understand the humor, such as a recent video he filmed as part of the “what’s on my desk” trend.

What’s in my desk?! Watch to see the items I can’t work without and the items I didn’t know were in my desk pic.twitter.com/kiNXg3Z8OK
— Scott Kupor (@skupor) August 17, 2026

“Quite frankly, I'm willing to try anything,” he said. “You know, at the end of the day, obviously I trust [my staff] to not completely embarrass me.”

Several agencies, including the Homeland Security Department, Transportation Department and Small Business Administration, have launched TikTok accounts in recent weeks after the Justice Department found in July that a 2022 law banning the Chinese social media platform from government devices is no longer applicable because the U.S.-based version of the app is now under majority control by American investors.

When asked if OPM would create a TikTok account, Nyoh replied “stay tuned.”

“They want to hear it from people their own age”

Amante — of the Partnership, which assists agencies with hiring — said she “applauds OPM’s desire to try to expand the way it recruits the next generation” but doesn’t think that its “specific messaging is likely to land well with Gen Z.”

In particular, she criticized OPM’s “Making Government Cool Again” slogan.

“Cool is not really a word that is being used frequently by Gen Z,” she said. “That is a Gen X-era word.”

Pew Research Center defines Gen X as those born between 1965 and 1980 and starts Gen Z with anyone born in 1997.

Writers for Slang Insights, a website led by a “team of linguists, language enthusiasts, cultural researchers and content creators who share a common passion for understanding how language evolves,” reported in an Aug. 4 blog post that “if you’re still saying ‘cool,’ you might be dating yourself.”

Relatedly, a video promoting OPM’s Early Career Talent Network features country singer Kid Rock, a Trump supporter whose peak popularity was in the 2000s.

Amante also suggested that OPM should highlight younger civil servants on social media.

“It's not helpful to only hear the leaders telling [potential hires] what they think they will experience,” she said. “They want to hear it from people their own age.”

“Broad reshaping of government”

OPM’s social media posts encouraging younger workers to apply for the government come after agencies have shed more than 300,000 employees since the end of 2024, according to federal workforce data.

Kupor argued that many of the incentives that the Trump administration used to push out civil servants, such as Voluntary Early Retirement Authority, didn’t apply to early-career workers.

He also contended that there’s an opportunity for a “broad reshaping of government.” Specifically, the OPM director pointed to the importance of addressing skills shortages across the civil service, which the Government Accountability Office has identified as a major issue since 2001, as well as the share of retirement-eligible federal employees, which currently stands at 13.5%.

But the percentage of agency staffers under the age of 30 decreased over the first year of the Trump administration, according to a Partnership analysis, going from 8.9% in September 2024 to 7.9% in January 2026. Researchers attributed this to the mass firings of probationary employees, which generally impacted those who had been hired or promoted within the past year.

And while the Trump administration created Tech Force in 2025 with a goal to bring on 1,000 early-career software and data engineers potentially as soon as the end of March, OPM reported to Government Executive that it has only made 325 hires so far. And the president eliminated initiatives like the Presidential Management Fellows, a nearly 50-year-old program that served as a pipeline for graduate students to consider and pursue a career in government.

Still, Kupor is optimistic.

“I think at the end of the day, people are going to take a job or listen to what I say mostly because I give them either a compelling reason that matches their interests and that shows that we're helping them try to develop their career,” he said. “If we do that well, then I think we'll continue to attract great people. Quite frankly, if that story is not believable or not compelling to folks, then I get it, and we won't have the success that I certainly expect that we'll have.”

Correction: This story has been updated with the correct number of OPM communications staffers younger than 30.

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GSA looks to ‘meaningfully increase’ hiring to replenish its workforce

Jory Heckman — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:29:48 -0400

The General Services Administration, the federal government’s landlord, is looking to increase its hiring after going through significant staffing cuts last year.

GSA’s Public Buildings Service told staff in an internal notice last week that a total of 142 new vacancies have been posted to USAJobs, “reflecting our continued growth and need for talented individuals.” According to the notice obtained by Government Executive, PBS is hiring a mix of construction managers, lease contracting officers and building managers.

GSA Administrator Ed Forst told office heads in a separate email that “we need to meaningfully increase our hiring in certain disciplines and decisively attract the best talent that will support GSA as we continue to grow as an agency.”

“Recruiting the right people is one of the most important things we will do to strengthen our agency. The people we bring in will shape our capacity, our performance, and our ability to power the federal government for today and our future,” Forst wrote.

An agency official familiar with the matter told Government Executive that 142 vacancies “constitutes just one week's worth of hiring news,” and that "GSA has a few hundred approved hiring opportunities, which will include external hires and internal merit promotions.”

“Many positions have already been filled, and many more opportunities are in the offer or awaiting onboarding stage as GSA strategically invests to meet its evolving mission needs,” the official said.

Current and former agency officials said significant hiring is needed at PBS to help it recover from last year’s deep staffing cuts. Since the start of the second Trump administration, PBS has cut its total workforce by more than 2,500 employees through a combination of layoffs, attrition and voluntary separation incentives.

PBS cut its workforce by 45% between September 2024 and November 2025, according to a report in April from the Government Accountability Office. Agency officials told GAO that PBS didn’t conduct workforce planning before the staffing cuts.

In the early days of the Trump administration, Department of Government Efficiency officials embedded at GSA pushed for dramatic reductions in government office space, posting lease terminations on its online “Wall of Receipts.” The DOGE website shows that 264 leases were eliminated, roughly a third of its earlier goal.

PBS employees said the agency’s staffing cuts have hampered its goal of offloading underutilized office space. A PBS employee said the agency lost nearly half of its workforce “but retained 100% of the work.”

“Everything was being slow-rolled while they tried to terminate all soft-term leases,” the employee said. “Fast-forward to today, where we aren’t just sprinting, we are racing. Workloads have doubled for just about everyone. The workforce remaining is feeling the strain.”

GSA officials told GAO that about a third of the staff responsible for processing disposals of GSA-owned properties left the agency, “creating uncertainty on whether properties were properly vetted and approved to begin the process.”

The agency, which manages 40% of the federal government’s office space, is accelerating plans to offload underutilized buildings and those falling into disrepair as part of a $50 billion maintenance backlog. Forst told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee in May that half of GSA’s buildings portfolio is in “fair” or “poor” condition.

Forst and the heads of more than 20 federal departments and agencies asked Congress to give GSA full access to the Federal Buildings Fund, a pot of money that includes all rent payments GSA receives from its tenant agencies.

Over the past 15 years, Congress has skimmed about $1 billion annually from the Federal Buildings Fund to cover other expenses. Adjusted for inflation, Forst said that Congress has “looted” about $22 billion from the fund that would have otherwise gone to repairing and maintaining federal buildings.

The Public Buildings Reform Board, created by Congress under the 2016 Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act (FASTA) to help GSA identify properties it should offload from its portfolio, said congressional appropriations won’t address GSA’s maintenance backlog without a “radical reduction” of its real estate portfolio.

The Trump administration, with GSA's assistance, is in the process of selling or consolidating headquarters buildings used by several agencies in the Washington, D.C. area. So far, it has announced plans to sell headquarters buildings for the Agriculture Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Education Department plans to vacate its headquarters and hand it over to the Energy Department. The PBRB recommends selling the current Energy Department headquarters.

Education employees under this plan would relocate to leased space that previously held staff for the now-shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development.

The FBI is moving out of its headquarters building and relocating to the Ronald Reagan Building, just a few blocks away, which already provides office space for several other agencies. This week, a federal judge granted a permanent injunction blocking those plans.

GSA is also embarking on plans to renovate its own headquarters. Once those renovations are completed in December 2028, the building will also serve as OPM’s headquarters.

In the early days of the Trump administration, GSA officials pushed for deeper cuts to the PBS workforce, at one point seeking a 63% reduction in its workforce, which would have eliminated more than 3,500 total positions. But more recently, under new leadership, GSA has been taking steps to reverse those workforce cuts.

PBS told staff in April that it’s looking to hire 400 employees over the next six months. Last fall, the agency offered another 400 laid-off employees the opportunity to come back to their jobs.

Another PBS employee told Government Executive that “we don’t have enough people.”

“They realize they let go of too many people and were inundated, because the kids at DOGE didn’t know what they were doing,” the employee said.

A third PBS employee said “the cuts really had a brain drain effect that will take a decade to recover from.” A fourth employee said the agency’s hiring efforts were “replacements for all the firings.”

“It does appear that GSA is doing some serious hiring to rebuild after last year,” a fifth PBS employee said.

Tenant agency officials interviewed by GAO “voiced ongoing concern” about PBS’s capacity. One of its tenants, the Judicial Conference of the U.S., the national policymaking body for federal courts, is asking for control of courthouse property management.

While the Judicial Conference of the U.S. has held this perspective for decades, the organization told Congress that the issue has worsened since the Trump administration cut the staff at the federal government’s real estate agency.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sens. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D. and John Boozman, R-Ark, introduced a bill last month that would give the federal judiciary authority to manage courthouse facilities in 10 judicial districts.

“Managing the federal government’s real estate portfolio is an enormous undertaking, and too often our courthouses are at the bottom of the priority list for maintenance, repairs, and upgrades,” Cramer said in a statement.

GSA’s Forst told the Washington Reporter that the Judicial Space and Facilities Management Effectiveness Act was “misguided,” and cited several GAO reports as evidence that the federal courts system is not prepared to manage its own facilities.

“The Judiciary’s core mission is to deliver justice — not to manage buildings,” he said.

A former PBS employee who received a RIF notice last year said the agency’s hiring push was “bittersweet” news. He said he considers himself “lucky for having landed a great new job” after the RIF, but his "former colleagues that are left need help with a relentless workload and there is so much to be done.”

“It was all just so random and terribly senseless, obviously,” he said about last year’s sweeping RIFs. “Honestly, I would never go back to [federal] employment under this administration and don’t envy anyone that is still there now. It’s just a real mixed bag of feelings.”

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Life happened. Now what about your retirement benefits?

Tammy Flanagan — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:00:30 -0400

Retiring from federal service is a major milestone, of course, but it does not end the need to understand how federal benefits work. In the years after retirement, life events and new opportunities can raise important questions about insurance, survivor benefits, beneficiary designations and the effect of returning to government employment.

Today I will highlight several post-retirement issues that federal employees may want to plan for in advance. This is not an all-inclusive list, but it’s a list that will hopefully remind you that it is important to review your benefits and be sure to understand how they can change as life goes on.

The topics included today are the FEGLI Living Benefit, reemployment in federal service after retirement, changing beneficiary designations, marrying after retirement and providing benefits to a new spouse, and understanding how CSRS or FERS retirement benefits may change over time.

The FEGLI Living Benefit

The FEGLI Living Benefit is one that we hope that we will never need, but it can be very important to the person who is entitled to it.

This benefit allows an eligible employee, annuitant, or compensationer (a person receiving benefits from the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs as a result of a work-related injury) enrolled in FEGLI Basic life insurance to receive a lump-sum payment while still living if the person is terminally ill and has a documented medical prognosis showing a life expectancy of no more than nine months. This payment can provide important financial flexibility at a difficult time.

It may help pay for medical costs, in-home care, family travel, household expenses, debt, or other needs that arise when an employee or retiree is facing a serious illness and may no longer be able to work or manage expenses in the usual way.

Using the Living Benefit also affects the people who would otherwise receive the FEGLI Basic insurance after the insured person’s death. The Living Benefit is an advance payment of Basic insurance, so any amount paid while the insured person is living reduces, or may eliminate, the Basic insurance payable to beneficiaries later.

Employees may be able to elect a full or partial Living Benefit, while annuitants and compensationers may elect only a full Living Benefit. A full election generally means there will be no remaining Basic insurance payable to beneficiaries after death, although any FEGLI Optional insurance remains separate and is not reduced by the Living Benefit election.

Although premiums may end for the amount covered by the Living Benefit, the individual must continue to pay premiums for any option coverage remaining.

The Living Benefit is not subject to federal income tax. According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, these payments are tax-free at the federal level, though you should still check your specific state laws since a few states treat them differently.

Because the decision is irrevocable and directly affects both current cash flow and survivor protection, it should be considered carefully with family members, beneficiaries, and financial or tax advisers.

For example, suppose a federal retiree with FEGLI Basic coverage is diagnosed with a terminal illness and elects to receive the full Living Benefit. The lump-sum payment could help the retiree pay for uncovered medical expenses, arrange additional care at home, or reduce financial pressure on family members.

However, because the Basic insurance has been paid in advance, the retiree’s beneficiaries should understand that little or no Basic insurance may remain payable after death, depending on the election made.

Reemployment in federal service after retirement

Some retirees later return to federal employment as reemployed annuitants. In many cases, the retiree’s existing CSRS or FERS annuity continues during the period of reemployment, but the new federal salary is reduced, or offset, by the amount of annuity that applies to the time worked.

This means the retiree usually does not receive both a full annuity and a full salary at the same time unless a specific exception or dual compensation waiver applies. The employing agency pays the reduced salary and sends the offset amount to the retirement fund, while OPM generally continues paying the annuity separately.

FERS retirees who are receiving the FERS annuity supplement should also understand that returning to work can affect that payment. The supplement is separate from the regular FERS basic annuity and is intended to approximate the Social Security benefit earned through FERS service until age 62.

After a retiree reaches the minimum retirement age, the supplement is subject to an earnings test. Wages or net self-employment income above the annual exempt amount ($24,480 in 2026) can reduce the supplement by $1 for every $2 earned over the limit, and high enough earnings can reduce the supplement to zero.

This rule applies even when the retiree returns to federal service as a reemployed annuitant, including situations involving a dual compensation waiver; the waiver may affect salary offset rules, but it does not by itself exempt the FERS supplement from the earnings test.

Reemployment can also allow an increase to future retirement benefits if the period of service is long enough and retirement deductions are properly withheld or deposited. A supplemental annuity may be available after the annuitant completes at least one year of actual, continuous, full-time reemployment service, or the equivalent amount of part-time service.

If an annuitant is reemployed in a part-time position at a tour of duty less than 40 hours per week, for example, 20 hours per week, and if the annuitant works a total of 1,040 hours in a year (52 weeks x 20 hours), then the employee must work for two continuous years to be eligible for a supplemental annuity.

When the reemployment ends, the supplemental annuity is added to the retiree’s existing annuity rather than replacing it, giving the retiree an additional monthly amount based on the new period of federal service.

A redetermined annuity may be available after a longer period of reemployment, generally at least five years of actual, continuous, full-time service, or the part-time equivalent. Instead of simply adding a supplemental amount to the old annuity, a redetermined annuity is a new computation that considers all creditable service and the law in effect when the employee separates from reemployment.

The retiree must elect the redetermined annuity in place of the prior annuity and any supplemental annuity that otherwise would be payable. Because the rules can vary based on the type of retirement, appointment, retirement system, salary offset status, and whether a waiver applies, retirees should review the details with the employing agency and OPM before accepting reemployment and again before separating from the new position.

OPM has a new Benefits Administration Letter 26-104, titled Reemployed Annuitant Decision Tables, designed to detail the agency actions required for retirement coverage and benefits, health insurance, and life insurance for an annuitant upon appointment, separation, and death (if an annuitant dies during reemployment).

Changing beneficiary designations after retirement

Beneficiary designations determine who receives certain benefits, such as life insurance proceeds or retirement contributions or the final retirement payment, after a retiree’s death. Because family circumstances can change after retirement, retirees should periodically review and update their designations to make sure benefits are paid according to their current wishes.

Outdated forms can lead to unintended results, especially after marriage, divorce, the death of a beneficiary, or changes in family relationships. An easy way to do this is to file new designation of beneficiary elections which will supersede any that have been previously filed.

Different federal benefits have different designation of beneficiary forms, so retirees should be careful not to assume that one designation controls every benefit. For FEGLI life insurance, the beneficiary form is SF 2823, Designation of Beneficiary, Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance Program. SF 3102 is the Designation of Beneficiary form for federal employees and retirees under both the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS).

You can download these forms directly from www.opm.gov/forms. These forms are separate from any survivor annuity election, which is governed by different rules.

Annuitants should send the completed SF 3102 and SF 2823 to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management Retirement Operations Center at P.O. Box 45, Boyers, PA 16017-0045. The forms must reach OPM before your death to be legally valid.

TSP beneficiary designations are handled separately through the Thrift Savings Plan. Retirees can add or update TSP beneficiaries by logging in to My Account at TSP.gov; TSP also explains that the designation must be on file with TSP at the time of death and that a will or other document will not control the TSP account.

Because beneficiary designations can override expectations after events such as divorce, remarriage, or the death of a beneficiary, retirees should review FEGLI, CSRS or FERS, and TSP designations whenever their family or estate-planning situation changes.

Marriage after retirement and benefits for a new spouse

Marriage after retirement can create new questions about survivor benefits and continued access to federal benefit programs for a new spouse. If a retiree marries after leaving federal service, the retiree may elect a reduced annuity to provide a survivor annuity for the new spouse, but the election generally must be made in writing to OPM within two years of the date of marriage.

This election is separate from changing beneficiary designations and is important because, without a survivor annuity election, a new spouse generally will not receive a continuing monthly CSRS or FERS survivor benefit after the retiree’s death.

OPM will provide the retiree with form RI 20-63, Survivor Annuity Election for a Spouse, which will include the option of choosing the maximum amount available or an amount that will provide a survivor annuity of a specific dollar amount (no more than the maximum survivor annuity benefit).

OPM will also include a letter outlining the cost associated with this election and directions on how to respond within the two-year deadline for this election. It is important to contact OPM after you remarry and well before the expiration of the two-year deadline so that you have time to consider your options.

In addition to the regular survivor annuity reduction, a post-retirement election for a new spouse generally requires a permanent actuarial reduction. OPM describes this reduction as the difference between the annuity already received without the survivor election and the amount that would have been paid if the survivor election had been in effect since retirement, plus 6% interest.

This actuarial reduction is spread over the retiree’s lifetime and continues even if the marriage later ends, so retirees should ask OPM for a cost statement and carefully review the effect on their monthly income before confirming the election.

A new spouse may also be added to FEHB coverage because marriage is a qualifying life event. A retiree who is enrolled in FEHB may generally change to a family enrollment or self plus one enrollment during the permitted qualifying life event window, beginning 31 days before marriage and ending 60 days after marriage or doing a future open season.

Retirees should include this request when contacting OPM regarding the remarriage. Providing a survivor annuity is also an important election to allow FEHB coverage for your new spouse to continue if you predecease them.

Cost-of-living adjustments to maintain your buying power

The purpose of cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for federal retirees is to protect the fixed retirement income CSRS or FERS retirement benefit from the impact of inflation that can erode the buying power as the costs of goods, services, and medical care rise over time.

The retirement benefit COLA automatically adjusts annuity payouts using the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) measured during the third quarter of the year.

The CSRS receives the full calculated COLA matching the measured rate of inflation, while the FERS benefit often receives a modified or capped COLA (e.g., if inflation exceeds 3%, the FERS increase is typically 1% less than the CPI increase) and generally does not kick in for regular retirees until the Minimum Retirement Age (MRA), which is 57 for retirees born in 1970 and later and between 55 and 57 for retirees born earlier.

The “offset” for CSRS Offset retirees and survivor annuitants

CSRS Offset retirees and survivor annuitants should also understand that their civil service annuity may be reduced when Social Security entitlement begins or would begin upon proper application. For retirees, OPM generally determines the offset around age 62, or at retirement if the retiree is already over age 62, and reduces the CSRS annuity by the portion of Social Security attributable to CSRS Offset service.

A CSRS Offset survivor annuity is computed like a regular CSRS survivor annuity, but it may be reduced if the survivor is eligible for Social Security benefits based on the retiree’s federal service.

In cases where the survivor annuity is reduced because of the survivor annuitant’s own “earned” Social Security retirement benefit, the offset may be reduced or eliminated. It is important for survivor annuitants to understand this since OPM may not always be aware of the survivor annuitant’s earned Social Security benefit amount.

See previous Government Executive articles, A Rude Annuity Shock and Sometimes, Your Benefit Really Is Too Small, to learn more about this situation.

Health benefits and life events

Health benefits can also change after retirement, not only the premiums and the benefits, but your needs may change over time. Outside of open season, FEHB changes generally must be tied to a Qualifying Life Event (QLE), such as marriage, divorce, death of a family member, or a move out of a plan’s service area, and many changes must be requested within 60 days of the event.

Annuitants should confirm the effective date with OPM because the timing can depend on the type of change. For example, some enrollment decreases may be made at any time and are commonly effective at the beginning of the month after OPM receives the election, while other changes follow the qualifying life event rules.

There is a little-known option to change insurance just because you have reached age 65, it is QLE 2L. This is your “ace in the hole” that you can only use once in your lifetime to change plans outside of open season.

This is generally used to change plans when enrolling in Medicare after retirement, but if not used at age 65, it can be used later – but only once!

Restoration of a reduced CSRS or FERS annuity

If a spouse or former spouse dies and the retiree’s CSRS or FERS annuity is being reduced to provide a survivor annuity for that person, the retiree should notify OPM and provide the required proof, such as a death certificate or marriage certificate in the case of a former spouse who remarries before age 55.

OPM may then increase the retiree’s annuity by removing the survivor reduction, restoring the annuity to the unreduced amount prospectively.

Retirees who divorce should also notify OPM promptly. If the marriage ends by divorce, the survivor reduction may be removed. However, as is often the case, a court order may require the retiree to continue providing a former spouse survivor benefit.

In a divorce, not only are survivor annuity benefits sometimes continued for the former spouse, but divorce can also create continuing rights for a former spouse to a portion of your retirement, often referred to as the “marital share.”

Court orders may also require assignment of FEGLI to the former spouse and require continuation of health benefits for the children of the marriage. There are also Temporary Continuation of Coverage (TCC) and Spouse Equity benefits available for a former spouse to continue health benefits coverage.

Because OPM must follow clear and specific court orders and will not rewrite unclear terms, retirees should make sure any divorce order addresses federal retirement, survivor, health benefits, and life insurance issues with precision. Be sure that your attorney uses the language outlined in the Attorney Handbook.

Key takeaways for federal retirees

Review benefits after every major life event. Marriage, divorce, the death of a spouse or beneficiary, reemployment, or a serious illness can all change how federal benefits work.

Keep beneficiary designations current. FEGLI, CSRS, FERS, and TSP benefits are controlled by their own forms or account records, and a will may not override an outdated designation.

Do not assume a new spouse is automatically protected. A survivor annuity election, FEHB enrollment change, or other action may be required within a specific deadline.

Understand how income can change after retirement. COLAs, CSRS Offset reductions, survivor benefit reductions, reemployment salary offsets, supplemental annuities, redetermined annuities, and court orders can all affect monthly income.

Act promptly after divorce or the death of a spouse or former spouse. OPM may need documentation to adjust an annuity, restore an unreduced benefit, or apply a court order.

Check before relying on assumptions. Federal retirement, insurance, health benefits, and TSP rules can interact in ways that are easy to overlook, so retirees should contact OPM, TSP, or a knowledgeable benefits specialist before making decisions that affect current income or survivor protection.

Understanding federal benefits does not end on the day an employee retires. Retirement can bring new decisions about life insurance, beneficiary designations, reemployment, survivor protection, health benefits, and changes to CSRS or FERS annuity payments.

By reviewing these rules before a major life event occurs – and knowing when to contact OPM, TSP, or a former employing agency, retirees can make more informed decisions, avoid unintended consequences, and better protect themselves and their families throughout retirement.

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New CDC chief looks to rebuild a workforce fearful of retaliation

Jory Heckman — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 19:13:20 -0400

The new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says she will focus on restoring trust with a workforce spread thin by staffing cuts and public health challenges.

CDC Director Erica Schwartz told staff at an all-hands meeting on Wednesday that she will “speak truth to power,” and ensure CDC employees can offer candid feedback on policy matters without fear of retaliation.

“I will listen to you. I will respect your expertise, and I will support you as you carry out this mission. I want CDC to be a place where an employee can respectfully say, ‘But ma'am, the evidence points in another direction,’ and know that your concern will be heard," Schwartz said, according to a transcript obtained by Government Executive. "Scientific integrity requires us to make room for respectful disagreement.”

Schwartz is the CDC’s first permanent leader in a year. The last permanent CDC director, Susan Monarez, was fired last summer, less than a month on the job, following conflicts with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Schwartz acknowledged Monarez’s firing, but told staff “there is no retribution for honest thought and honest conversation” under her leadership.

“I want you to feel psychologically safe. I do not want you to feel like you're in an environment where retribution will rain down upon you. That is not how I lead as a leader. And I feel very comfortable making sure that I can represent the CDC to our leadership and making sure that the secretary understands our point of view,” she said.

Schwartz said the CDC has been in a “a period of significant uncertainty,” and is looking to rebuild trust in the agency after more than a year of upheaval. The CDC recently commemorated the one-year anniversary of a shooting at its headquarters campus. On Aug. 8, 2025, a gunman fired more than 180 shots at the CDC headquarters, wanting to send a message against COVID-19 vaccines.

In recent months, CDC has responded to outbreaks of Ebola and hantavirus abroad, as well as cyclospora and measles outbreaks in the United States. It also stood up an emergency operations center for the FIFA World Cup.

Schwartz said she will work with CDC leadership to address the agency’s staffing gaps. The CDC has lost about a quarter of its workforce through layoffs and voluntary separation incentives. CDC officials told employees last month that a “strategic planning process” is underway to identify its staffing gaps and where hiring is most urgently needed.

“What are the critical areas that if we don't get these filled, we will fail in our mission for the American people? That information I will take back, and I will be that advocate for the CDC,” Schwartz said.

Among her concerns, Schwartz cited recent reporting from the Associated Press on “zombie programs” at the CDC that have been funded by Congress, but lack the staff to operate.

“The people that are here ... they're burning out, they're exhausted. And they're questioning, ‘Is this going to be the new normal?’ Well, the good news is, I'm here, I'm week one of being here, and now I can certainly be able to advocate for the CDC," she said.

A retired U.S. Public Health Services Commissioned Corps rear admiral, Schwartz previously served as the Coast Guard’s chief medical officer and deputy surgeon general.

The Trump administration has announced changes to the federal childhood immunization schedule that raise alarms among public health experts. Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reducing the number of recommended childhood vaccines. Schwartz said she will try to earn back trust with vaccine skeptics during her tenure.

“There are a lot of Americans who have vaccine hesitancy, and they feel that the CDC has been somewhat paternalistic when it came to vaccines, and so they feel that the CDC may not be speaking for them. I do think we have to be honest as an agency to say, 'Are we an agency for just those Americans that believe in vaccines, or are we an agency for all Americans and helping those Americans that have vaccine hesitancy understand why vaccines are so safe and effective?'” she said.

CDC employees reiterated concerns about staffing shortages and fear of retaliation.

“Thank you for acknowledging that we are tired, because we are,” one CDC employee said during the Q&A. “We are at a significant reduction in our employees. And that makes it really hard on the rest of us to pick up the slack, because the work doesn't change. We were already under-resourced and understaffed in public health, as you know, and now it's even worse.”

Another CDC employee told Schwartz that “fear of retribution” is a common concern among staff.

“We've been shot at. We see multiple outbreaks right now,” the employee said. “We also know what happened to the previous director. And I think that there is a general fear of speaking [about] what's actually happening.”

A third employee asked if former employees who received reduction in force notices would have an opportunity to rejoin the agency.

“We have so many vacancies, and we had these wonderful staff that were not separated due to performance. They were separated because of the way the RIF was done. Many of them are very eager to come back,” the third employee said.

Schwartz and other senior CDC leaders said they would look into opportunities for RIF’d employees to come back.

Yolanda Jacobs, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, which represents CDC employees, previously told reporters that CDC has made very little progress on hiring, and that recently laid-off employees looking to rejoin the agency haven’t made it far in the hiring process.

Kennedy recently told lawmakers that HHS is looking to hire 12,000 employees after going through widespread layoffs last year.

“Not only have we not had any excessive amounts of new hires, or even any really significant hiring of CDC employees, but we've also had ignoring and stalling when it comes to those employees that had been RIF'd, who were supposed to have priority for some of those jobs as the rehiring starts," Jacobs said. "Those individuals are not seeing any action as far as hiring goes. Those who have even applied have been told that they did not meet the qualifications for their own jobs, the jobs that they previously had.”

Jacobs, however, added that "a new CDC director has an opportunity to turn the tide."

Sean Michael Newhouse contributed to this report.

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Appeals court keeps limits on DHS immigration enforcement near churches

William J. Ford, Maryland Matters — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 14:47:01 -0400

A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld an injunction that bars Department of Homeland Security agents from conducting immigration enforcement “at or near” more than 1,400 houses of worship sprawling across 33 states and the District of Columbia.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a February 2025 ruling in favor of a coalition of Quaker, Sikh and Baptist congregations that sued to block the Trump administration’s reversal of a Biden-era policy discouraging immigration actions at “sensitive places.”

The religious groups argued that the administration’s policy would drive away immigrant attendees, burdening “their ability to worship communally and to minister to immigrant communities, both acts of which are fundamental to their religious exercise.”

U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang agreed, issuing the preliminary injunction in 2025 that blocked the new policy at those congregations, requiring DHS to follow the more-restrictive rules of the 2021 Biden policy. He declined to apply the injunction nationwide.

In its 40-page ruling Tuesday, the appeals court panel upheld the injunction, agreeing with Chuang that the houses of worship were likely to succeed on their claim that the administration’s policy, if implemented, would decrease “attendance at worship services and other activities.”

“The plaintiffs have presented evidence showing that the 2025 Policy is having a chilling effect on their congregations and already has caused declines in attendance among members of CBF [Cooperative Baptist Fellowship] and the Sikh Plaintiffs,” Senior Judge Barbara Milano Keenan wrote for the court.

“And our preceding analysis makes clear that this decline in attendance and the increased threat of immigration enforcement at all the plaintiffs’ houses of worship already has imposed a substantial burden on the ability of all the plaintiffs to express their religion through communal worship,” she wrote.

Keenan noted a January 2025 statement from a Homeland Security spokesperson that she said amplified the fact that the agency “intends to target houses of worship in future immigration enforcement actions.” The judge quoted the spokesperson’s statement last year that, “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest.”

“DHS’s statement emphasizing the rationale for this policy change shows that the threat of immigration enforcement at their houses of worship is real and substantial,” wrote Keenan, who was joined by Judges Pamela Harris and G. Steven Agee.

When asked for a response to the ruling Tuesday, a Homeland Security spokesperson replied with a paraphrase of that 2025 statement.

“Criminals are no longer able to hide in places of worship to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement and instead trusts them to use common sense,” the statement said.

It went on to say that Immigration and Customs Enforcement “does not target places of worship. This is just another false narrative to try and demonize our brave ICE law enforcement who are facing” increased assaults and death threats.

But Democracy Forward, the Washington, D.C.-based group that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the houses of worship, welcomed the ruling.

“The Trump-Vance administration’s policy threatened that longstanding tradition by forcing congregations to choose between fulfilling their religious mission and protecting members of their communities,” Democracy Forward said in a statement on behalf of the plaintiffs. “We are grateful that the court has preserved these protections while this case moves forward.”

The plaintiffs include the Sikh Temple Sacramento and six yearly meetings of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers: from Philadelphia, New York, New England, Richmond, Baltimore and Adelphi, Md. They also include the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a network of hundreds of churches located in 33 states.

Their lawsuit was in response to a policy, issued on the first day of the second Trump administration, lifting restrictions on enforcement activities around sensitive locations, like schools and churches. Agents instead were told to exercise “discretion along with a healthy dose of common sense” when deciding whether to act in or around a sensitive location.

It was a change from the 2021 policy that said enforcement near sensitive areas was to be avoided “to the fullest extent possible.” Such action could still be taken but, except in emergency situations, it needed agency approval first.

Matt O’Brien, deputy executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, called the 4th Circuit’s opinion “absurd.” FAIR filed a friend of the court brief in support of DHS.

“There is zero reason, constitutional or otherwise, why immigration enforcement should be prohibited near houses of worship. This is a politically-motivated decision by an activist judge.”

But in a concurring opinion, Agee noted the “narrow scope” of the preliminary injunction, which applies only to the houses of worship that sued the federal government. In essence, it doesn’t restrict Homeland Security from conducting immigration enforcement at or near sensitive places such as mental health centers, libraries, schools and other places of worship. It also doesn’t stop all activity, he wrote.

“A host of DHS immigration enforcement actions are expressly permitted by the preliminary injunction. It states, for example, that … [it] ‘does not enjoin or restrict [DHS] from conducting arrests in or near places
of worship when authorized by an administrative or judicial warrant,’” Agee wrote.

“Further … the preliminary injunction incorporates the provisions of the 2021 Policy, which itself did not ban all immigration enforcement actions at or near a place of worship,” he wrote, noting that the 2021 policy allows agents to act without prior approval when in pursuit of a suspect, when there’s a threat of violence and in other emergency situations. “Plainly, nothing in this Court’s decision or the preliminary injunction could be construed as limiting DHS’s ability to act in accord with these directives.”

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: info@marylandmatters.org.

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The watchdog gets watched: GAO’s hiring process length faces scrutiny

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:53:41 -0400

The Government Accountability Office is an independent legislative branch agency that reviews the effectiveness and efficiency of federal programs. For example, in recent weeks, GAO has issued reports finding that the State Department could be overspending on residences for overseas employees because certain housing standards haven’t been updated in more than three decades and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency cut staff without considering the impacts on disaster operations.

GAO’s own watchdog, however, determined in a report published on Monday that the oversight agency is taking longer to hire than other federal agencies and that there are issues with how it measures certain hiring data, which could impede efforts to shorten the time that it takes to recruit.

“The length of GAO’s hiring process increases the agency’s risk of not meeting its stated goal of hiring well-qualified candidates because prospective employees may accept other job opportunities while waiting for GAO to complete its hiring process,” the inspector general for the GAO wrote.

In fiscal 2024, the IG reported that GAO took an average of about 103 days to hire employees into roles that have been deemed mission critical occupations across government (e.g. information technology management). To compare, the agency’s internal hiring target is 98 to 101 days, and the Office of Personnel Management’s hiring goal for executive branch agencies is 80 days.

For instance, it took executive branch agencies that are part of an OPM dashboard an average of 72.1 days to hire for contracting roles in fiscal 2024 compared with 110.1 days for GAO to recruit for identical positions.

GAO’s chief human capital officer defended the hiring length in a letter attached to the report, noting that the agency “relies heavily on multiple rounds of interviews as an important part of our assessment process.” The official also said that GAO allows potential hires to negotiate their salaries, unlike other agencies, “but which may simultaneously add time to the process and may increase our ability to attract a broader applicant pool.”

The IG also reported that the agency inadvertently excluded 20, about 30%, of its fiscal 2024 mission-critical hires from time-to-hire data and that there’s a discrepancy between whether the hiring process starts when human capital staff consult with a hiring manager about a vacancy or when such consultation is complete.

“By using the consultation completion dates, [Human Capital Office]’s calculations would have undercounted the days spent on some hiring actions,” investigators wrote. “Further, HCO staff indicated that consultations often took longer than the allotted two days. However, because HCO did not record the start date for consultations, it cannot determine how long consultations took or accurately assess the length of its hiring process.”

GAO agreed with two of its IG’s recommendations: to periodically review hiring timelines and address inefficiencies and to update all internal documents to reflect the established target hiring time frames.

With respect to a recommendation to ensure all hiring actions are included in time-to-hire calculations, GAO countered that certain actions, such as annual promotions for analysts, shouldn’t be included. And regarding a recommendation about accurately documenting hiring dates, GAO suggested performing separate tracking of early actions in the hiring process (e.g. consultation with hiring manager).

Regardless, GAO officials said they would implement all of the recommendations by April 1, 2027.

The IG also noted that GAO in fiscal 2025 hired fewer than 10 entry-level employees and experienced a net loss of around 100 staffers because it didn’t backfill positions due to “budget constraints.”

The Office of Management and Budget has previously criticized GAO after the agency on several occasions determined that the administration violated rules around impoundments, which is when the executive branch delays or withholds congressionally approved spending.

For fiscal 2026, House Republicans proposed halving GAO’s spending level, but the final appropriations bill kept the agency’s funding flat.

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Archives workers granted telework ahead of D.C. IndyCar race

Erich Wagner — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:34:16 -0400

Officials at the National Archives and Records Administration announced Tuesday that employees stationed at its headquarters building in downtown Washington may telework for the rest of the week due to nearby construction associated with this weekend’s IndyCar race in response to safety concerns from its union.

Archives I, referred to colloquially as A1, is located inside and bound on three sides by the planned race route. Employees said that beginning this week, getting to the office has required navigating road closures, active construction around the building and a temporary pedestrian bridge over Pennsylvania Avenue NW, which itself is partially blocked by the branches of a neighboring tree as well as a fence.

Credit: IndyCar

Officials with the American Federation of Government Employees Council 260, which represents NARA workers, told Government Executive that they had been raising concerns about the potential for disruptions caused by the event since at least June. It was only after the union sent an email demanding management address “unsafe working conditions” around the building Tuesday that the agency informed employees—though not AFGE—that it would approve telework.

“NARA is authorizing situational telework, to the extent possible, through August 23, for employees whose duty station is Washington, D.C.,” the agency wrote in an email to employees. “Employees should coordinate with their supervisor to consider other workplace flexibilities such as maxiflex, and/or unscheduled leave. Schedule changes should be approved by your supervisor. Employees who must report onsite should plan for additional travel time and remain alert to road closures, pedestrian restrictions and transit service adjustments.”

In a separate message to the union, agency management said that while it had been in regular contact with both the U.S. Secret Service and IndyCar parent company Penske, it bemoaned a “fluid” situation “with circumstances constantly changing.”

But union officials said offering telework through Friday is not enough to protect employees, particularly those with disabilities. In an email to management Tuesday urging the authorization of telework, they described the difficulty that an employee “with mobility issues” had accessing the building on Monday, something they said would recur next week, as race organizers begin breaking down the temporary barricades and pedestrian bridge.

Photo courtesy AFGE

“Once they found [an ADA accessible] entrance, they were not able to use it because there was no one there to operate the lift,” the union wrote. “The employee then had to find the pedestrian bridge, which is not ADA accessible, and put their health and safety at risk by climbing the stairs. Since the bridge that employees were instructed to use was built against a tree with limbs at rail height . . . they were instructed to crawl under the limb, at additional risk to their health and safety as an employee with disabilities. This situation is obviously unacceptable.”

A photo taken Wednesday morning documented that workers had since cut the tree branch, though a fence continues to at least partially block the pedestrian bridge’s entrance.

Photo courtesy AFGE

The union also said the agency’s expectation that employees familiarize themselves with a newly modified building evacuation plan is similarly insufficient to ensure employees’ safety.

“The agency is obligated to ensure a safe working environment,” AFGE officials wrote in a follow-up email Tuesday. “The union expects that managers and supervisors will review the plans with their employees to ensure that everyone is aware of emergency egress routes. Since everything has been so fluid, those plans have not covered the situation on the ground so far this week, which is why we have requested that the agency station one or more facilities or security employees at the staff exit to help with way-finding.”

As of press time, union officials said the agency had not responded to its request to extend telework into next week. The agency did not respond to requests for comment.

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The CDC director’s job just got a lot more complicated

Syra S. Madad and Nahid Bhadelia, The Conversation — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 12:10:20 -0400

The new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Erica Schwartz, confirmed by the Senate on Aug. 5, 2026, is only the second CDC director to face Senate confirmation. Congress adopted the process for the agency after the COVID-19 pandemic to bring more scrutiny to one of the country’s most consequential public health jobs, as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023.

That change is especially important now. The CDC is tracking multiple measles outbreaks, investigating a multistate cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce and other produce, and supporting the response to the second-largest Ebola outbreak in history unfolding in Central Africa. At the same time, the Trump administration is reshaping federal childhood vaccine recommendations in ways that could weaken protection against preventable disease for years to come.

As public health policy becomes increasingly politicized and polarizing, the CDC director needs more than technical expertise and political skill. She must give the public clear, accurate guidance, including when the evidence conflicts with the preferences of the president or the health secretary.

Schwartz is a retired U.S. Public Health Services Commissioned Corps rear admiral, who was previously the chief medical officer with the Coast Guard and then the deputy surgeon general from 2019 to 2021.

As experts in infectious-disease preparedness, outbreak response and public health policy, we see Schwartz’s confirmation process as critical for a reason that goes beyond the vote itself.

Senate review can make a nominee answer publicly for her judgment, priorities and willingness to defend evidence. But it can’t ensure scientific independence or restore the people, systems and public trust that disease control requires. Confirmation opens a line of accountability – it doesn’t guarantee how the director will use it.

What matters now is how Schwartz uses the authority she has – and whether Congress and the administration give the agency the capacity to do its work.

Senate confirmation creates a public record

For most of the CDC’s history, the secretary of health and human services selected the agency’s director without a Senate vote. Congress changed that arrangement in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023. Beginning in January 2025, the president nominates the director, and the Senate provides its “advice and consent.”

The process adds several layers of review. The White House selects and vets a nominee, including reviewing financial interests and possible conflicts. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions examines the nominee’s record, seeks written answers and may hold a public hearing. If the committee advances the nomination, the full Senate decides whether to confirm the nominee by a simple majority.

The final 51-44 vote confirmed Schwartz, but the more consequential part of the process was the public record it created. At her July 15 hearing, senators pressed her on vaccines, scientific integrity and how she would handle political pressure. Her answers gave Congress, CDC staff and the public a standard against which to judge her decisions.

That is the clearest benefit of confirmation. A hearing cannot certify that a nominee will be a good scientist or an effective manager. Senators may also evaluate her responses through different political lenses. But the process forces key questions into public view before a director takes office, rather than after a crisis has already exposed disagreements inside the government, and gives Congress a stronger basis for oversight.

Outbreaks will test the agency, not just its director

The CDC director’s job can sound abstract when it is discussed as job duties and reporting lines. The fact that the U.S. is currently facing multiple simultaneous outbreaks from foodborne, vaccine-preventable and zoonotic pathogens shows that the job is far from abstract – it’s very hands-on.

The CDC is responding to continuing measles outbreaks. As of Aug. 13, the agency recorded 2,566 confirmed measles cases and 38 outbreaks in 2026 – the highest number of cases since 1991. Containing measles requires fast case detection, vaccination, contact tracing to stop its spread, as well as clear communication with families and clinicians.

The agency is also investigating multiple cyclospora outbreaks linked to iceberg lettuce that had caused more than 9,481 confirmed illnesses – including two deaths – in 17 states as of Aug. 5. That investigation is a reminder that outbreak control depends on coordination among epidemiologists, laboratories, health departments, regulators and the food industry.

Overseas, the Democratic Republic of Congo is experiencing the largest Ebola outbreak recorded in the country’s history. The outbreak involves a strain of the virus called Bundibugyo, for which there is no licensed vaccine or specific treatment. As of July 30, the World Health Organization had reported more than 3,600 confirmed cases across the DRC and Uganda, and several travel-associated cases treated elsewhere. An outbreak at that scale calls for international surveillance and laboratory cooperation even when the immediate risk to most Americans is low.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration – guided by the stance of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – has directed changes to the federal childhood immunization schedule that depart from the long-standing evidence-review process used to develop vaccine recommendations and have alarmed public health experts.

These outbreaks are caused by different pathogens, but each relies on the same underlying assets: timely data, specialized staff, functioning laboratories, cooperation with state and international partners, and communication that people find trustworthy. Yet despite these ongoing pressing public health needs, between January 2025 and June 2026 the Trump administration cut the CDC workforce by nearly one-third, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management.

No director, however capable, can make up for missing epidemiologists, laboratory experts, data systems, and state and local capacity. Maintaining those essentials requires the federal government to provide steady funding and long-term support, rather than expecting a CDC director to do more with fewer people and resources.

Accountability is not the same as independence

Senate confirmation gives Schwartz a measure of democratic legitimacy. The president nominated her, senators examined her record, and a majority consented to her appointment.

It does not place her outside presidential control. Her responses at the confirmation hearing have already raised concerns about whether she would stand up against political pressure from the Health and Human Services secretary to maintain evidence-based policy.

The CDC sits within HHS, and the CDC director has neither a fixed statutory term nor explicit congressional protection from being fired. Schwartz will have to advise political leaders, carry out lawful administration policy and, at times, explain evidence that may be politically inconvenient to those in power.

If Congress wants a CDC director who can follow the evidence, it would need to write that authority into law by giving the CDC the authority to release certain data and recommendations without prior approval from political offices and require that any override of those judgments be documented and disclosed. With such a change, political leaders who overrule the science would have to do so on the public record.

There is precedent for this approach. In 2019, Congress enacted the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, which codified standards of timeliness, accuracy and objectivity for federal statistical agencies. Under that framework, the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics operates with authority to release statistical information without prior political clearance and according to predetermined release schedules.

Congress could extend similar protections to other CDC products, including outbreak reports, case counts, vaccine recommendations and its primary scientific publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Doing so would help protect the agency’s core public health functions from political interference.

In addition, bills such as the Scientific Integrity Act, which has been introduced repeatedly but has not passed, could require federal science agencies, including the CDC, to adopt and enforce scientific integrity policies that protect career scientists and maintain scientific independence.

Confirmation makes the CDC director more publicly accountable. Its value will ultimately depend on whether Schwartz and the institutions around her are able to protect rigorous surveillance, candid communication and evidence-based recommendations.

Syra S. Madad, Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School and Nahid Bhadelia, Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases, Boston University

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

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Plans to move FBI headquarters to Reagan Building blocked by federal judge

Jory Heckman — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:54:20 -0400

A federal judge in Maryland is blocking the Trump administration’s plans to relocate the FBI headquarters to the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington, D.C.

This marks the latest twist in a nearly 15-year saga of several administrations trying to replace the FBI’s crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building with a new headquarters, and unwinding the decisions made by prior leaders.

The General Services Administration under the Biden administration selected Greenbelt, Md., from a list of three shortlisted sites as the future home of a suburban FBI headquarters. But the Trump administration scrapped those plans in 2025, opting instead to move the FBI to the Reagan Building.

The first Trump administration pushed for demolishing the Hoover Building and constructing a new headquarters in its place. But Democratic lawmakers ultimately blocked funding for these plans.

U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang on Monday granted a permanent injunction on Monday that will prevent the administration from moving forward on plans to relocate the FBI headquarters to the nearby Reagan building or tapping into funds Congress already approved for the project.

Chuang noted that in prior spending bills, Congress required that GSA must select Greenbelt or one of the two other sites on its shortlist.

“On their face, these statutory mandates preclude the GSA from choosing a different site, such as the Reagan Building,” he wrote.

The FBI said in a statement that "this is not the first time courts have tried to undermine the administration in its goal to make government more cost-effective for American taxpayers."

"The court has chosen to impermissibly intervene for political reasons. This FBI is mission-focused and will continue the best course of action to meet the needs of law enforcement," the agency said.

The lawsuit is led by the State of Maryland and Prince George’s County. Maryland’s Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a statement that, “by blocking the Trump Administration’s unlawful attempt to move the FBI to the Reagan Building and divert the funds Congress set aside for this project, the Court has cleared the path back to Greenbelt.”

Congress passed a FY 2026 spending deal stating that unspent funds set aside for the FBI headquarters project “may not be further obligated until the FBI submits a "completed architectural and engineering plan” to the House and Senate appropriations committees.

“To date, no such architectural and engineering plan has been submitted,” Chuang wrote.

Chuang also noted that the FY 2026 spending package makes no specific reference to an FBI headquarters at the Reagan Building “and contains no language approving of it.”

A GSA prospectus approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last fall estimates that it will cost $1.4 billion to retrofit the Reagan Building to accommodate the FBI.

GSA planned to fund the Reagan retrofit with $844 million in unused money provided to the agency in past appropriations bills for construction of a new FBI headquarters as well as $555 million given over the years to the FBI for a new headquarters. GSA expected alterations to the Reagan Building would be complete in fiscal 2030.

Administration officials told the court that plans for an FBI headquarters in Greenbelt would likely face opposition from a Republican-controlled Congress.

“The court cannot find that there is no realistic possibility that the consolidated FBI headquarters project will proceed at the Greenbelt site, particularly given that the composition of the relevant congressional committees, and the priorities expressed by their members, are not static,” Chuang wrote.

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Social Security expands electronic health record sharing to speed up disability claims adjudication

Christian Robles — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:43:00 -0400

The Social Security Administration is looking to speed up disability claims adjudication by allowing Americans to consent to their medical providers sending the agency digital copies of their health records through a data sharing superhighway.

In April, Epic — the largest electronic health record vendor for U.S. hospitals — announced that its health system customers are connected to SSA through the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, or TEFCA. Through that superhighway, dozens of hospitals and clinics can send digital medical records to SSA, eliminating the need to fax documents to the agency and slashing disability claims processing times by up to 50%.

Jacksonville, Florida-based Baptist Health is among the first Epic customers to start sharing electronic health records with SSA through TEFCA.

Baptist Health has sent SSA several thousand electronic medical records since it started sharing data with the agency through TEFCA at the end of July, Aaron Miri, the health system’s chief digital and information officer, told Nextgov/FCW.

Because of TEFCA, Baptist Health has reduced the number of staff dedicated to processing medical records for SSA to essentially half a person, Miri said in an interview. Before TEFCA, three staffers were manually sending SSA medical records through fax machines and checking that the agency actually received the information, he said.

“We’re seeing time saved, we're seeing accuracy [of medical records] go up, we're seeing happy patients,” Miri said. “It's just positive, positive, positive.”

Dozens of Epic customers in California, Oklahoma, Washington, Arizona and other states have also connected to SSA through TEFCA.

Epic expects more than 550 hospitals and nearly 20,000 clinics will use TEFCA to exchange data with SSA by the end of the month, and all of its customers to eventually migrate to TEFCA, a company spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW.

SSA has connected to 84 health care entities and made 60,595 data requests through TEFCA as of August 13, according to an agency official familiar with its health information technology strategy.

SSA obtaining electronic medical records for disability claims adjudication is not new. The agency has received health information from medical providers through Carequality and eHealth Exchange — two other health data sharing superhighways — for years. But TEFCA has several advantages compared to those pathways.

Medical providers can use their existing connection to the TEFCA rather than starting new legal agreements to connect with the SSA, the Epic spokesperson said. They also no longer have to constantly provide SSA with an updated list of their facilities because TEFCA has a directory SSA can use to identify facilities, they added.

Over 65% of Epic customers are currently sharing records with SSA across TEFCA, Carequality and eHealth Exchange, they said.

But SSA is agnostic whether medical providers use TEFCA or another pathway to share data, so long as patient consent is part of the equation and they share adequate information for disability claims adjudication, the agency official said.

SSA is working with TEFCA Qualified Health Information Networks, or QHINs, besides Epic, which would give more medical providers the ability to send the agency digital health records, according to the agency official.

“eClinicalWorks and NetSmart are actively in various stages of development and testing with SSA today,” they clarified. SSA has a seat on the TEFCA governing council,Nextgov/FCW previously reported.

The Epic spokesperson said the company wants all medical providers — regardless of whether they use Epic software — to electronically send medical records to SSA. But that could prove difficult to achieve.

Many behavioral health, specialty and rural providers do not use electronic health records, meaning they continue to rely on manual record request processing, noted Jennifer Burdick, a divisional supervising attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia. Department of Health and Human Services data backs up that assessment: thousands of substance use and mental health treatment facilities continue to use paper charts instead of software to maintain patient records.

Even though TEFCA promises to speed up claims adjudication for thousands of Americans, disability advocates have warned Americans are finding it hard to access SSA disability benefits. That’s in part because SSA is pushing online servicing and has introduced AI onto its phone lines, according to a Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund report published in March. SSA contested claims that disability benefits are becoming harder to access and touted a decline in its initial pending backlog in a previous statement to Nextgov/FCW.

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Attorney general violated Hatch Act ethics rules, nonprofit says

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:22:40 -0400

During Todd Blanche’s confirmation process, Senate Democrats and some Republicans argued that the president’s former personal attorney lacked the independence needed to serve as attorney general. Now, just one week after he was sworn in, a public interest nonprofit is alleging that Blanche has already violated an ethics law that governs the political activities of federal employees.

Public Citizen on Tuesday requested that the Office of Special Counsel launch a Hatch Act investigation into an Aug. 14 speech that Blanche gave during a Long Island campaign rally attended by police officers for Bruce Blakeman, a Republican running for New York governor. OSC enforces the Hatch Act.

While most civil servants are permitted to participate in partisan political campaigns, “further restricted employees” — generally those at intelligence and enforcement agencies — are not.

“Though Blanche did not specifically say ‘vote for,’ his participation in the campaign rally along with President Donald Trump constitutes an active endorsement of the Republican candidate,” wrote Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen.

Specifically, Public Citizen said that Blanche is classified as a “further restricted employee” under DOJ policy. Additionally, civil servants are barred under the Hatch Act from engaging in political activities in their official capacity. The organization said that Blanche was identified at the rally as the attorney general.

A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement to Government Executive that: “This is a politically-motivated complaint designed to weaponize the Hatch Act against the Attorney General for his support of law enforcement. The complaint is baseless, and it will not stop DOJ from continuing to work with our state and local law enforcement partners to keep Americans safe.”

An OSC spokesperson said that the agency has no comment. The Senate recently confirmed Charles Baldis, a former GOP Senate staffer, as the new special counsel.

Several other administration officials have been the subject of Hatch Act complaints.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington accused Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick of running afoul of the Hatch Act for encouraging voters to not support Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayor race. The nonprofit also contended that Labor Department inspector general Anthony D’Esposito broke the ethics rules over apparent actions he took while in office to prepare for a congressional run.

Penalties for violating the Hatch Act include removal from federal service, a grade reduction, ban from federal employment for up to five years, suspension or a civil penalty of up to $1,000.

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USDA hasn’t looked at staff attrition ahead of relocations, but downplays its impact

Sean Michael Newhouse and Jory Heckman — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:14:25 -0400

The Agriculture Department plans to hire 16,000 employees this year, but senior officials expect these hires will mostly “offset expected attrition," driven by sweeping reorganization plans.

A coalition of federal employee labor unions, nonprofits and local governments is asking a federal judge to stop USDA’s plans to move thousands of employees across the country, arguing that the move is an illegal attempt to downsize its workforce. Lawmakers included a provision in the fiscal 2026 appropriations bill for USDA that blocked officials from reorganizing or relocating offices or employees without congressional authorization.

Department officials pushed back on plaintiffs’ claims that its relocation plans are a reduction in force in disguise, but Justice Department attorneys told the court last month that the “reorganization plans include workforce optimization measures, including downsizing.”

“The fact remains that relocating employees — even if some voluntarily resign instead — is not the same as implementing large-scale RIFs as Plaintiffs suggest,” DOJ attorneys wrote. “USDA has reiterated time and again that it is relying heavily on completely voluntary tools to reduce its workforce.”

The department told employees receiving relocation notices it was a “myth” that the reorganization is “just another way to shrink the workforce and get rid of federal employees.”

A USDA spokesperson said in a statement that the "department has made clear the reorganization is a regimented, multi-step process, and that all services and supports will continue without interruption."

The human cost of relocation

Tom Bewick, vice president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, told the court that NIFA employees were required to accept relocation offers before being allowed to apply for a reasonable accommodation or hardship exemption.

“NIFA appears to be aware that the relocation is likely to cause a mass exodus of experienced staff because they have recently implemented new systems to attempt to preserve institutional knowledge,” Bewick wrote.

Those new systems include having employees document the steps necessary to run particular grant programs.

“That experience cannot be easily replaced,” Bewick wrote, adding that it takes a new hire at NIFA about three or four years to learn how to run a grant program independently.

“Many of the employees hired in 2020 (to address the attrition from forced relocations in 2019) are just beginning to hit their stride,” he added.

Collin Bradley, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3976, which represents Foreign Agricultural Service employees, wrote that in a recent internal survey of more than 150 bargaining unit employees, 94% said they would quit rather than relocate to Kansas City. Other internal polls conducted by unions have found similar results.

“I am certain there will be significant attrition if the relocation orders proceed,” Bradley wrote. “We have shared the results of our survey with the Agency and we have communicated our concerns about attrition.”

Downsizing efforts revealed

Internal documents shared with the court show that USDA requested an extension of its Voluntary Early Retirement Authority in February 2026 as part of its reorganization plans and to “support USDA's efforts to Downsize the Federal Workforce.”

More than 28,000 employees have separated from the Agriculture Department, largely through voluntary separation incentives, since the start of the second Trump administration. Factoring in hiring, the department has seen a net decrease of nearly 16,000 employees.

Agriculture officials told OPM it expected another 5,000 employees to accept its extended VERA offer. If the department fell short of that goal, USDA wrote that it would try to shrink its workforce through relocations, reassignments and downgrades – but not through RIFs.

In the recent filing the department noted that, “due to delays related to expansive litigation impacting USDA reorganization planning," its reorganization plans will continue through at least February 2027.

DOJ attorneys wrote that USDA hasn’t conducted any attrition analysis yet, but will do so, "in conjunction with hiring and facilities planning at relocation sites as it finalizes relocation plans on an agency-by-agency basis."

“The best information currently available to the agency indicates that, as a result of the current job market, attrition will be less than during prior reorganizations,” they wrote.

The department is trying to relocate many more employees than it attempted under the first Trump administration. The 2019 relocation of the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture set the stage for what followed, with those agencies losing more than half their staff after employees quit rather than relocate to Kansas City, Mo.

Agriculture officials told the court on July 24 that the department is planning to hire nearly 16,000 employees this year. But according to updated staffing plans, the department expects that a “majority” of its hiring initiatives will “result in no net gain,” and will instead “offset expected attrition.”

“In fact, through workforce optimization initiatives, these organizations may end FY 2026 with reduced employee counts where attrition outpaces gains,” USDA wrote.

Under USDA’s staffing plans, the Forest Service “expects to reduce the number of onboard employees by the end of FY 2026,” with hiring “focused on” logging and mineral production, “to support the Administration’s priorities.”

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue USDA’s hiring plans are focused on recruiting less-experienced staff into different positions than the ones its more experienced workers are leaving.

The department reported that the Food and Nutrition Service, which has lost about a third of its employees under the Trump administration, “does not anticipate hiring in FY 2026 unless mission-critical vacancies occur.” The Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture will conduct “nominal” hiring.

According to department figures, nearly a third of its new permanent hires this year will be early career employees.

Concerns over staffing and expertise

Plaintiffs warn that “early career employees will not have the experience, skills, expertise, or training to replace the highly experienced staff who are forced out by the relocation.”

AFSCME's Bradley wrote that FAS is already borrowing staff from other USDA components through three or four-month details to maintain staffing for its programs.

“Relocating to Kansas City will mean that the Agency won’t have the same experts readily available, which could lead to critical staffing gaps,” he wrote.

A Natural Resources Conservation Service employee with decades of experience received a “notice of intent” on Aug. 5 that she would be reassigned to a position more than 1,200 miles from where she currently lives. Besides the new job title, the employee said that she has not been provided with a description of the new position’s responsibilities.

The NRCS employee has worked remotely for years under a reasonable accommodation, which she said was recently reapproved. Agencies provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities in order to help them more easily perform their jobs.

When she pointed this out, an HR official responded in an email viewed by Government Executive that “you will need to accept [the new position] and report to your new duty location in order for us to move forward with the reasonable accommodation process for that position and/or location.”

“I don't know anything about the job. I don't know if it violates my rights,” the employee said. “I have several disabilities. My husband is my caregiver, and my doctors already work with me. Moving to another location will require me to have to find new doctors and also have to see if my husband can relocate, which his job doesn't have reciprocity, and I can't provide for myself.”

Multiple agencies have cracked down on remote work and telework reasonable accommodations as part of the Trump administration’s directive ending work from home for the civil service.

The NRCS employee has until Aug. 20 to decide whether to express intent to accept the reassignment, express intent to decline with the possibility of getting a new job at the agency or apply for retirement. She said that the stress of the decision has exacerbated her conditions and forced her to take sick leave.

“There's so many unknowns, and the agency intentionally, I think, did this to force people to make rash decisions,” she said. “But I don't make rash decisions like that when it comes to my life and the life of my family.”

A second NRCS employee said many of her coworkers were hired as remote workers, and that the Trump administration’s relocation plans are “decimating the staff that does the work on the ground.”

A NIFA employee said she opted into relocation after unsuccessfully looking for another job that would keep her in the D.C. metro area.

“It boiled down to whether I could find another job that met my and my family's needs and I couldn't,” the NIFA employee said. “We're currently under-staffed and will be critically short of staff after the relocation occurs. We don't know if or when we'll be able to hire back all of the needed positions. Challenges will continue at the agency for the foreseeable future.”

A Food and Nutrition Service employee said staff working out of the Braddock Road office building in Alexandria, Virginia have been directed to relocate to the Yates Building in downtown Washington, D.C., or the George Washington Carver Center in Beltsville, Md.

According to the employee, union negotiations over cross-country relocations have just begun. The FNS employee said she “definitely would not have moved out of state.”

“I’m close, but not quite close enough, to retirement. Trying to hang in there through the administration and hoping we’ll get some telework back one of these days,” she said.

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Getting a simple FOIA request from OPM shouldn’t be this hard

Al Shaw, ProPublica — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 13:37:35 -0400

I file a lot of Freedom of Information Act requests. I’ve been requesting staff lists from both Trump administrations, and I have tracked thousands of federal political appointees in order to publish financial disclosures in searchable databases.

Much of that data was sourced from the Office of Personnel Management, which maintains a trove of information about who works in the federal government. But that agency’s FOIA department was thrown into chaos as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency fanned out across federal agencies to cut employees in early 2025.

Getting records from the agency has since become an increasingly Kafkaesque process, one that in early July of this year bounced me between three different seemingly abandoned email inboxes and two web portals. Aside from the fact that my once-routine requests now languish for months, just asking for documents has become its own kind of shell game.

“They just let the whole Privacy team go,” a now-former FOIA specialist at OPM told me by email in February 2025, referring to public records office staff. The specialist was cut the next day.

Here’s how the process worked at most agencies before the Trump administration and DOGE destroyed the offices that managed these requests: You would send a simple email with a text description of the documents you want. That’s it.

It didn’t mean you would get the records in the most timely manner, or would get the records you wanted at all. But it was a simple process, and it often worked.

According to OPM data, more than 600 government information specialists (staffers who administer FOIA and the Privacy Act) have resigned or been fired since the start of the second Trump administration. Within OPM itself, 12 information specialists left, seven of whom were laid off. (There was one new hire in that time period.)

Reached by phone, the former FOIA specialist told me the cuts made the office less efficient, less able to perform its function and threatened the statutory laws they are required to fulfill.

At the end of the 2025 fiscal year, over 1,600 FOIA requests were still in OPM’s backlog, seven times more than at the end of fiscal year 2024. The average processing time for a simple request at the agency slipped to over 84 days — twice as long as the year before.

Indeed, I noticed my records requests were taking longer, and they were increasingly steered toward web portals. Such was the case in early July, when I attempted to submit a request to OPM for human resources data. When I clicked “log in,” I was confronted with a message reading, “Something went wrong while processing your action. Please contact admin@ains.com for assistance if the problem persists.”

I emailed the address, but the message bounced back to me. AINS, it turned out, was no longer the name of the company — it is now known as Opexus. Opexus has received more than $50 million in federal contracts, according to a Bloomberg report, and has come under fire for lax cybersecurity standards after two of its employees were indicted for deleting and compromising government data. (One pleaded guilty in April, and the other was convicted in May). On its website, Opexus claims to process FOIA requests for 80% of federal institutions.

OPM’s website still listed contact information for a FOIA public liaison, someone who is supposed to help the public understand the records process and assist with requests. When I emailed the address, I got an automated response reading, “I am no longer at OPM. If you need assistance with a FOIA matter, please contact FOIA@opm.gov.”

So I did. I immediately got another automated message. This one told me to submit my request to the National FOIA Portal, a cross-government site that allows you to submit a FOIA request to any agency.

So I did that, too. Afterward, I finally got a response that acknowledged my request — from the same OPM portal that was throwing an error any time I tried to use it.

Stymied by the lack of response from the agency itself, I reached out to Opexus support, explaining that I was a FOIA requester and that the OPM site wasn’t working. I got a response from someone named Stephen, saying, “I have escalated this issue to our engineering team.” When I followed up a few days later, Stephen said, “I have identified the root cause of the issue and am currently working with the OPM administrator to implement the necessary fix.” Further questions on the support ticket thread weren’t answered.

On July 23, 13 days after I had filed the support ticket with Opexus, I got another response asking me again what error I was getting. I told them I was still getting the same message. A few hours later, I tried logging back in. The site was fixed.

In a statement, Opexus said it became aware of the issue on July 10 when a customer support case was opened. Incidentally, that was the day I had opened one. The statement noted access to the portal was restored on July 23, and that the issue did not prevent OPM from receiving FOIA requests through alternate submission methods. The company said that “there is no evidence that customer data was accessed, lost, or compromised” and that the issue was isolated to OPM’s portal.

The statement added that Opexus recognizes “how important uninterrupted access to FOIA request systems is for the public.”

OPM did not respond to a request for comment.

I’m still waiting for the records.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. This story first ran in Dispatches, our weekly newsletter from our reporters about their recent investigations.

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Bill expanding paid leave for feds is pared back in Senate

Erich Wagner — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 17:54:59 -0400

Legislation aimed at improving the amount of paid leave federal employees are eligible each year took another step forward as Democratic senators introduced companion legislation shortly before Congress left for its August recess.

In June, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced the Comprehensive Paid Leave for Federal Employees Act (H.R. 9261), a measure that would provide feds with up to 12 weeks each year of paid family leave, to be used to attend to a serious health condition or care for a spouse, child or parent. It also would cover absences needed in connection with a family member’s deployment into active-duty military service, or to help a family member who has been the survivor of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking.

And last month, Sens. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and seven other Democrats introduced their own version of the bill (S. 5168). That measure also extends 12 weeks per year of paid family leave to federal workers to deal with a health condition or a family member’s health condition and to attend to a family member’s military deployment, but it excises the provision relating to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking.

“Right now, our laws are forcing federal workers to make the impossible choice between caring for their families and keeping their jobs,” Schatz said in a statement. “Our bill will provide federal workers with 12 weeks of paid leave, giving them the time they need to take care of their own health and their loved ones.”

Paid family leave and other provisions relating to federal workers has recently been a tougher sell for the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol. In 2019, as lawmakers considered providing 12 weeks of paid parental leave to federal workers each year via the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, the House’s version of the legislation also included family leave, only for the Senate to balk during negotiations between the chambers.

Likewise, the House has included a provision blocking President Trump’s anti-union executive orders’ implementation at the Pentagon in both last year’s NDAA and the one currently under consideration. The Senate stripped the provision from their version of the bill last year.

Despite the more pared-back approach, the Senate’s family leave bill has still attracted the support of several unions and other federal employee associations.

“Expanding paid family and medical leave ensures federal employees never have to choose between caring for themselves or a loved one and serving the American people,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees. “This legislation will strengthen the federal workforce, improve employee retention, and help the government remain a competitive employer for the dedicated public servants our nation depends on.”

“Federal employees should never have to choose between caring for their loved ones and paying their bills on time,” said National Treasury Employees Union National President Doreen Greenwald. “The Comprehensive Paid Family Leave Act would provide federal workers with the flexibility and support they need during some of life’s most significant moments. As the federal government works to attract and retain talented public servants, providing comprehensive paid family leave is both the right thing to do and a smart investment in the workforce.”

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National crisis and support hotline operations remained consistent despite staffing cuts, watchdog found

Christian Robles — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 17:50:09 -0400

Three hotlines offering Americans mental health crisis support saw the quality of their services remain consistent and their communications increase, even as the federal agencies managing them saw a slight decline in staff, according to a Government Accountability Office report published on Aug. 6.

The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, Veterans Crisis Line and National Maternal Mental Health Hotline generally saw calls, texts and chats increase in fiscal 2025 compared to fiscal 2024, the watchdog found.

Performance metrics remained largely consistent across the three hotlines amid the spike in communications, according to the report.

The 988 Lifeline saw answer rates — the percentage of contacts routed to crisis contact centers and answered by crisis counselors — hold steady for calls and texts throughout fiscal 2025 at levels comparable to past fiscal years, GAO found. The hotline also saw the average response times for calls remain steady throughout fiscal 2025 but did see large variations in the average response times for texts and chats.

The Veterans Crisis Line saw monthly answer rates for texts, chats and calls remain “high throughout [fiscal] 2025” — 89% to 99% — and “consistent with previous years,” according to GAO. The average response time for answered calls and texts in fiscal 2025 were 8.6 and 27.1 seconds, respectively, which are comparable to the averages from fiscal 2021 through 2024, the watchdog concluded.

The National Maternal Mental Health Hotline saw “high” monthly answer rates for calls and texts of 92% to 95% throughout fiscal 2025, the report found. Throughout the fiscal year, 89% to 94% of hotline contacts had wait times of less than 30 seconds, it added.

Staffing changes

The findings suggest that the performance of all three mental health support hotlines was largely insulated from the operational challenges other federal agencies faced following sweeping 2025 reductions in force.

The departments of Health and Human Services and Veterans Affairs lost some employees working on the hotlines under 2025 reductions in force, GAO found.

The 988 Lifeline coordinating office, for example, saw its headcount drop from 24 to 18 during fiscal 2025, according to GAO. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which oversees the office, had not backfilled those positions as of February 2026.

But the watchdog cautioned that overall workforce changes for the 988 Lifeline are unknown because the number’s crisis responders are employed by over 200 local crisis contact centers. GAO did not tabulate workforce changes for these local facilities.

A May 2026 survey in JAMA, however, found that 71% of 988 Lifeline center leaders say their center is understaffed and almost 90% of them reported difficulty acquiring resources to hire staff.

“This study suggests that 988 Lifeline center staffing shortages could be associated with operational demands, underscoring the importance of increased investments to bolster the 988 Lifeline workforce,” the medical journal's survey concluded.

The Veterans Crisis Line saw its workforce remain largely steady, dropping to 1,149 in April 2026 from 1,162 in October 2024, according to the GAO report. Additionally, the hotline’s responder turnover rate hit 18% in fiscal 2025, which is on par with the 17% it saw in fiscal 2024, the report added.

HHS lost four of the six full-time employees dedicated to providing oversight of National Maternal Mental Health Hotline operations under an April 2025 reduction in force, the Health Resources and Services Administration told GAO. Those four positions have not been filled and staff from other programs have been fulfilling oversight responsibilities as of March 2026, the agency told GAO.

The watchdog did not assess whether the contractor that operates and staffs the hotline, Postpartum Support International, saw a change in staffing levels.

A spokesperson for Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., who requested the GAO report, did not return a request for comment by the time of publication.

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