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GSA’s centralization push is a return to its roots, not just a Trump priority

Nick Wakeman — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:59:57 -0400

The General Services Administration’s push to centralize government buying is as much a return to its roots as it is a Trump administration initiative, according to one of the leading architects of the consolidation.

Laura Stanton, acting commissioner for GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, gave a bit of a history lesson during remarks at the GovExec-produced SAP NOW event on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. GSA started in 1949 as part of a series of recommendations from the Hoover Commission.

“The reasons we were founded as agency are the same reasons and the priorities that I’m going to talk about today,” Stanton said. “Going back to those founding principles is really important to understanding where GSA is and what we’re doing.”

GSA wants to consolidate more government buying through its vehicles. There is plenty of room for that growth with GSA contracts accounting for about 25% total government buying. In 2025, $110 billion in order volume flowed through GSA vehicles.

“That’s a great baseline, but I also think that it’s an indication that we still have a lot of decentralization across the government,” Stanton said.

GSA has long had its Assisted Acquisition Services, but that organization concentrates on contracts and task orders exceeding $50 million.

“There are lot of common goods and services that everybody needs to deliver everyday that are far below that level,” Stanton said.

To fill that niche, GSA created the Office of Centralized Acquisition Services. A lot of routine buying was happening agency-by-agency.

Stanton said that agency-by-agency buying led to inconsistent pricing, duplicative contracts for the same items and negotiations that left money on the table.

OCAS will step into the void and manage actual transactions, not just create master contracts. The theory is that by aggregating demand across agencies, GSA can negotiate better and drive consistency in pricing.

“This means we have to understand the demand for common goods and services across the agencies, so data becomes key,” she said.

OCAS is already working with the Small Business Administration, Office of Personnel Management, other smaller agencies and a few larger ones on the acquisitions of common goods and services.

The office is in a growth mode and Stanton recommended that industry get to know them through their quarterly pipeline reviews.

“You can hear directly about what’s going on in that group and you can figure out how to align to the needs they are articulating,” she said.

OCAS will act as a shared services center actually executing transactions, not just as a contract vehicle shop.

“The more that we’re able to bring into the centralized acquisition group, the more we can begin to work at scale and get those benefits for the federal government at the task order level, not just at the master contract level,” Stanton said.

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Despite taxing year, IRS watchdog reports mostly smooth filing season

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:46:50 -0400

Despite having to make more than 100 changes to the tax code as a result of the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, employing about a quarter fewer employees and experiencing leadership turnover, an independent IRS watchdog reported that the tax agency conducted a largely successful filing season in 2026. But the Taxpayer Advocate Service also warned that staff cuts made it harder for taxpayers who needed assistance to receive it.

“In the end, the IRS performed better than expected in most respects. The vast majority of taxpayers filed their returns successfully and received their refunds without significant delay,” National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins wrote in a Wednesday report to Congress. “IRS leadership and its workforce deserve substantial credit for that accomplishment, particularly given the extraordinary operational pressures they overcame.”

TAS reported that the IRS processed almost 99% of individual tax returns by the end of filing season. The office attributed this to stable leadership in the division responsible for tax filing as well as a “significant majority” of returns being automatedly processed through electronic submission and direct deposit.

Still, the watchdog criticized phone wait lines, the level of provided in-person assistance and the filing experience for many taxpayers who rely on paper checks.

“With fewer employees and even fewer experienced employees, personal service was harder to come by,” Collins wrote. “That translated to longer waits for assistance, fewer experienced employees available to work on complex account issues, delayed responses to correspondence and, as a result, longer case resolution times.”

In total, IRS answered 21% of calls in 2026 with an average wait time of 14 minutes compared with 25% the prior year when taxpayers waited an average of eight minutes.

The TAS noted this was somewhat by design, as the IRS prioritized assigning employees to work on responding to paper correspondence instead of answering phones because staffers often end up not performing work while waiting for a taxpayer to call.

But the watchdog flagged that the phone line for taxpayers when they are unable to pay their liability, for example, only answered 31% of the time and after an average wait of 45 minutes. Likewise, the line taxpayers need to call to prove their identities when their returns are suspected of identity theft had an answer rate of 19% with a 20-minute average wait.

The TAS also reported that the number of fully staffed Taxpayer Assistance Centers decreased to 42 from 102 in 2025 and that the Trump administration’s pivot away from paper checks contributed to delays of six weeks or more for taxpayers who requested non-electronic refunds.

“A modernized IRS can and should improve efficiency and service, but transformation should not come at the expense of accessibility, fairness or human assistance,” Collins wrote.

The National Treasury Employees Union said the TAS report shows the IRS workforce deserves praise for managing “to do more with less” but also bemoaned the reduced service availability.

“No taxpayer should be left out in the cold for needing help paying their fair share,” said NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald in a statement. “A smaller, less effective IRS undercuts the whole tax system and deprives our government of much-needed revenue.”

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Secret Service phone security lapses put US officials at risk, watchdog says

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 14:18:00 -0400

The Secret Service failed to effectively secure and manage mobile devices used for official business, including during protective operations, creating risks that adversaries could intercept sensitive communications and use them to target U.S. leaders and other protectees, according to a watchdog report issued Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general determined Secret Service employees routinely relied on personal phones for official work, including during domestic and overseas protective assignments, because government-issued devices lacked key tools needed to communicate with law enforcement, foreign partners and other officials.

Those personal devices were not managed or secured by the government, creating vulnerabilities that could expose operational details, employee information, contacts, location data, photos and other sensitive material, the report said.

Adversaries “could have intercepted and exploited Secret Service information, placing at risk our Nation’s leaders, other protectees, and employees — especially when unsecured devices were used overseas,” the inspector general wrote.

The audit grew out of broader reviews of the Secret Service following the July 13, 2024 attempted assassination of then-former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa. During those reviews, the watchdog said it learned that Secret Service personnel frequently used personal cellphones for official business, raising security and federal records concerns.

One episode described in the report connects the issue directly to the Butler security breakdown. Shortly before the attempted assassination, a Secret Service employee used a personal device to receive a picture message from local law enforcement of the would-be assassin because of reliability concerns with the employee’s government-issued phone. The employee told investigators that prior issues had prevented them from sending text messages with images using government equipment.

The watchdog also found that, after the attack, another employee had to take extra steps to email a photo of the would-be assassin to colleagues because a known issue prevented them from simply forwarding the image by text on a government-issued device.

The report points much of the blame at the Secret Service’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, which is responsible for setting mobile device security standards, managing government-issued devices and ensuring compliance with agency policies.

Secret Service employees told investigators that government-issued devices often lacked commercial messaging apps commonly used by foreign police, military officials, embassy drivers, State Department personnel and other partners overseas. Some also said they needed personal devices to access websites blocked on government phones, including sites used to research restaurants where a protectee was scheduled to dine.

Employees also cited reliability problems. According to the report, government-issued devices frequently disconnected from the Secret Service virtual private network, and about 12% of wireless help desk tickets involving mobile devices were related to VPN issues.

The watchdog found that the use of personal devices had become routine and expected during foreign assignments. Of 24 employees and supervisors interviewed about international travel reimbursement records, 23 said they relied on personal devices, with most saying they needed them during nearly every foreign assignment.

The inspector general also reviewed call and text records and found more than 15,000 instances in which employees sent or received calls from colleagues’ personal phones while working protective events. It found about 24,000 text messages between personal devices and government-issued phones, though its analysis did not include communications made solely between personal devices or through messaging apps.

The report also found that Secret Service mobile devices used overseas lacked required mobile threat defense software designed to provide real-time protection from malware, cyberattacks and other threats. The Secret Service did not begin installing that software on any government-issued mobile devices until August 2025, despite DHS policy requiring it for devices used outside the United States.

The watchdog also found that the Secret Service did not consistently wipe data from government phones after employees returned from international missions, even though agency policy required employees to wipe devices within 24 hours of returning to the United States. One employee told investigators their phone had never been wiped over the course of eight years and 20 international trips, including travel to high-risk countries. Another employee reported 15 trips over eight years and estimated their phone had been wiped only four times.

The Secret Service concurred with all five watchdog recommendations, including recommendations to improve its process for identifying mobile device needs, strengthen cybersecurity training, communicate that personal devices are not allowed for official business and update app vulnerability testing policies.

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Artificial intelligence is cutting months off nuclear licensing review times, official says

Edward Graham — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 10:00:00 -0400

Artificial intelligence has already helped the Nuclear Regulatory Commission shave years off its typical licensing review process, an agency official said on Thursday. Now, the NRC is looking at how it can safely adopt other emerging capabilities to further speed up its review processes.

Speaking at the ATARC AI for impact summit in Virginia, NRC Chief Data Officer and Deputy Chief AI Officer Basia Sall said uses of AI have built upon recent regulatory changes and federal guidance to turbocharge the once drawn-out procedure for granting licenses for nuclear facilities.

“I’m happy to report we've already reduced the amount of time it takes for licensing,” Sall said. “For example, one type of licensing would take four years. We said we're going to get it down to 18 months. We just finished that first round of that licensing in nine months.”

Not all of this is strictly due to AI. President Donald Trump issued an executive order in May 2025 to reform the NRC, which included setting an 18-month deadline on licensing reviews. But AI has helped the agency further shorten those licensing timelines, and Sall said internal personnel believe they can use the technologies to make the process even more efficient.

“I think some of our AI gurus at our agency were like, ‘Oh, yeah, we can do it better,’” she said.

NRC is also using AI to help with drafting documents “to make sure we look at the precedent” of previous decisions, Sall added.

Engaging with industry partners who are developing their own AI tools has also helped NRC conduct faster regulatory reviews. Sall said the agency has allowed some of these actors “to take our NRC public data and curate those data sets” for their own relevant applications.

“What that means is we receive a much better application than we have in the past,” she said. “We don't have as many questions. It's clear once we get it into our hands, we start our process, we accept it and then we start to do our review process.”

Using GSA’s AI offerings

NRC has also been leveraging some of the software and products made available through the General Services Administration’s OneGov initiative, which launched in April 2025 and provides agencies with significant discounts on select private sector technologies by treating the entire government as one customer. More than 20 companies have reached deals so far with GSA to offer their services at discounted rates.

Through OneGov’s offerings, Sall said NRC has already been testing AI tools like Anthropic’s Claude, Azure OpenAI and Google Gemini “for limited use cases with public data” and added that “we're finding some good success with that.”

GSA said in May that agencies have placed more than 120 orders for AI offerings through the strategy, which has made these technologies available for use to around 3.4 million federal employees.

NRC is also just beginning to take advantage of GSA’s USAi platform, which launched last August and serves as a testing ground for agencies to experiment with AI tools. A GSA official said earlier this month that “over 25 different agencies” were already using USAi, with an additional 16 others expected to begin using the platform before the end of 2026.

“We're looking at various tools about what makes sense,” Sall said, adding that “it’s going to be a menu” when it comes to testing out the various models on the platform.

Beyond experimenting with additional AI use cases, Sall said NRC has also been developing its own services. She cited the agency’s internally-built tool, known as SimplifAI, as something "which we're really proud of,” adding that it was built off Azure OpenAI and “we are finding that we're using that for our regulatory documents.” NRC recently moved to a 2.0 version after the initial model became deprecated.

NRC’s most recent AI use case inventory says the text retrieval and generation tool enhances the agency’s “efficiency and consistency in licensing, oversight, and other regulatory activities.”

Sall said some employees have also been training SimplifAI to help them write speeches.

“We're really proud that tool continues to develop,” she said, adding that “having those tools — a menu of tools — is going to be key, we think, moving forward.”

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Oregon lawsuit could upend federal management of public lands

Alex Brown, Stateline — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

A new lawsuit challenging a logging project in Oregon threatens to unravel the management plans governing hundreds of millions of acres of federal public land.

At stake are thousands of leases and permits covering billions of dollars of economic activity — including mining, drilling, grazing, logging, ski resorts, wind and solar projects, outdoor recreation, hunting and fishing. If successful, the lawsuit could throw the management of huge swaths of the West into chaos.

Some experts fear the new legal uncertainty around federal agencies’ management authority could unleash a tsunami of lawsuits targeting everything from mining to the conservation of wildlife habitat.

“They’ve opened Pandora’s Box here,” said Susan Jane Brown, the attorney who filed the lawsuit and serves as principal at Silvix Resources, a nonprofit environmental law firm.

“When you throw that whole system into chaos, it’s a problem whether you’re the oil and gas industry or the timber industry or someone who wants to take a fall hunting trip. There’s a lot at stake here.”

The legal battle stems from Republican lawmakers’ recent use of the Congressional Review Act, a previously obscure tool, to push for more mining and drilling on public lands overseen by the federal Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.

Under President Donald Trump, Congress has aggressively used the review power granted by the 1996 law to revoke decisions made during the Biden administration, including financial regulations, energy efficiency standards and auto emissions rules.

Some legal experts contend that by using the law to target public land policy, Congress unwittingly invalidated hundreds of land use plans, along with decades worth of permits and management decisions. The Oregon lawsuit is the first to test that theory in court — but public lands advocates don’t expect it to the be the last.

“This is incredibly destabilizing for anyone that cares about public lands, whether you care about those as an industrial developer or a wilderness advocate,” said John Ruple, research professor of law at the University of Utah’s Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources, and the Environment.

Over the past year, legal experts, agency veterans, conservation groups and industry leaders have warned that Congress was using the Congressional Review Act in a way that could undermine land use plans across the country. Oil and gas drillers could have their permits challenged in court. Ranchers could lose their leases. And understaffed federal agencies would have to redraft hundreds of plans that typically take years to complete.

“This has been flying under the radar,” said Michael Carroll, a land management campaign director with the Wilderness Society, an environmental group. “[Congress] basically opened themselves up to multiple lawsuits from any number of stakeholders calling into question whether or not an agency has the authority to issue permits.”

The Congressional Review Act

The three-decade-old Congressional Review Act requires new regulations issued by federal agencies to be submitted to Congress before taking effect. Congress then has a review period of 60 working days during which it can vote to revoke them.

This review power was rarely invoked until Trump’s first term, when Republicans used it to overturn 16 regulations. The GOP has been even more aggressive in Trump’s second term, overturning 23 rules so far, including conservation standards for water heaters, overdraft lending regulations and restrictions on pollutants in tire manufacturing

Until recently, management plans for federal public lands were not considered “rules” subject to congressional review under the law. Agencies have issued well over 100 such plans since 1996 without ever submitting one to Congress. Those documents guide the work of agency officials who oversee specific areas of land, often covering millions of acres.

Created after years of public meetings and local feedback, they determine which landscapes will be leased for oil and gas drilling, protected for endangered species or open for off-road vehicles, along with a multitude of other uses.

But last year, Republicans asked the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan advisory agency for Congress, to affirm a sweeping new view of the Congressional Review Act. The office found that certain management plans were subject to review because their land use decisions “prescribed policy,” and determined that lawmakers’ queries about those plans had opened the 60-day review “clock” in each instance.

Using this new interpretation, Republicans in the past two years have revoked plans that restricted mining and oil production on federal lands in Alaska, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming.

But the repercussions could go well beyond those specific plans.

None of the plans issued by federal land managers over the past 30 years was ever submitted for review, because no one at the time considered them to be rules. In other words, hundreds of plans covering millions of acres of land could be deemed invalid under the new congressional interpretation.

Oregon lawsuit

Now, a lawsuit in Oregon will put that argument to the test. Cascadia Wildlands, a conservation group in the Pacific Northwest, has filed a complaint challenging a timber harvest on Bureau of Land Management land in western Oregon. That logging project was approved under a management plan that was issued in 2016.

Since Congress now considers such plans to be rules, the plaintiffs argue, the 2016 plan never took effect because it was never submitted to Congress.

Cascadia Wildlands has fought numerous legal battles over logging projects approved by the Bureau of Land Management. If the lawsuit over the management plan is successful, said Nick Cady, the group’s legal director, the same theory would give them leverage to block any logging project issued under the 2016 plan.

“They let the genie out of the bottle,” Cady said. “Instead of just letting [the Congressional Review Act] move forward with whatever Republicans choose to select, it’s worth curbing that by pointing out that it can point both ways.”

If the plan is struck down, activists of all types could use that precedent to challenge any activity on public land governed by a management plan that hasn’t been reviewed by Congress.

“It is a target-rich environment if our lawsuit is successful, and even if it’s not successful we’ve already demonstrated that there’s a lot of interest here,” Brown said. “This is what happens when you overturn longstanding precedent and throw spaghetti at the wall.”

Cady and Brown said they hope their case compels Congress to revise the Congressional Review Act to exempt public land management plans.

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

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Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

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As opposition mounts, House cancels vote on VA overhaul bill

Erich Wagner — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:33:08 -0400

House Republicans on Thursday gaveled floor activity for the week, effectively cancelling a planned vote on a controversial Veterans Affairs Department overhaul bill that packages bipartisan benefits increases with cuts to others and increased privatization of health services.

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

But Democrats warned at a press conference Thursday that the larger bill is an effort to “hijack” the Major Richard Star Act, which has more than 300 House sponsors and a discharge petition just five signatures short of forcing a floor vote, and anchor it with $60 billion in cuts to other veterans’ benefits, like those associated with tinnitus and sleep apnea, alongside plans to further prioritize veterans’ health care and abridge VA psychologists’ collective bargaining rights.

“This bill pits veterans against veterans,” said Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Pa. “I think it stabs those serving right now in the back, many of whom are currently fighting a war. When it comes time for them to apply for their benefits for conditions linked to their service, they will see those benefits cut . . . The same politicians who added nearly $5 trillion to our national debt to pay for tax giveaways to the rich and powerful, who cut health care to help pay for those tax giveaways, now want to force other veterans to pay for these very important VA benefits increases.”

Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., also noted that the version of the Major Richard Star Act within the Republicans’ megabill is watered down compared to the standalone version of the measure. This new iteration implements a cap that would prevent impacted veterans from receiving both their retirement and disability benefits in full.

“They claim this fixes the wounded veterans tax, but it doesn’t,” he said. “It creates a cap in the amount of benefits they can get so they cannot get their full medical benefits and retirement benefits together. They’re nickeling and diming our veterans, our wounded warriors, while they’re at the same time proposing $500 billion to pay for the Iran war. And it takes away PACT Act benefits from 1.5 million veterans to pay for it.”

Veterans groups zeroed in on the dangers of how the bill “rewrites” benefits associated with service-connected tinnitus and sleep apnea. The VA first floated changing how it compensates veterans suffering from those conditions during the Biden administration, but advocates argued that process is governed by medical and scientific analysis, not “politics.”

“Once Congress starts rewriting the disability ratings whenever it needs money, there’s no limit,” said Jess Finucan, director of policy and advocacy for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “Today it’s ‘just’ tinnitus and sleep apnea. Tomorrow, will it be PTSD? Will Congress decide that taking care of veterans suffering from the long-term effects of toxic exposures suddenly isn’t worth the price tag?”

And Craig Romanovich, executive director of the Union Veterans Council, who himself suffers from “severe” tinnitus, said these conditions contribute to other medical conditions—by defanging coverage of hearing loss and sleep apnea, Congress would make it harder to qualify for benefits under those knock-on disabilities as well.

“There is a constant ringing in my ears—it’s ringing right now,” he said. “It deprives me of my sleep, it causes anxiety and depression, and it causes issues in my family. These are the hard truths of something I live with every single day of my life . . . These are all secondary issues to tinnitus. If this goes through and you can no longer claim tinnitus, now you will have to fight for all of those secondary conditions on their own merits, making it much harder to get compensation and care.”

Labor leaders warned that the Republican bill’s changes to the Veterans Community Care Program, the initiative by which veterans can receive VA-sponsored medical care from private sector providers, could serve as the “tipping point” toward privatization, funneling money away from VA facilities and thereby causing service deterioration which in turn would fuel more privatization.

“This pushes us farther down a dangerous road, one that speeds up privatization of the VA,” said American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley. “It locks in biased standards that VA facilities must meet, while holding private providers to no such standards . . . This is not strengthening the VA, it is hollowing the VA out.”

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Award-winning civil servants counter negative stereotypes of government employees

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 16:15:52 -0400

Persuading young people to work in public service is challenging, several speakers said on Monday at a “Celebration of the American Public Servant” gala sponsored by the National Academy of Public Administration in conjunction with the U.S. semiquincentennial. Government Executive was a partner for the event.

“When you think about media today, it's not always in our favor to be a public servant,” said JoAnne Bass, a retired Air Force officer who was the first woman to serve as the highest-ranking enlisted leader in a U.S. military branch.

But the federal employees who spoke at the event, many of whom have served for decades or have received a public service award, argued that their work records show the positive impact that a “bureaucrat” can have on the public.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser told gala attendees at the Library of Congress that “young people may not realize that some of the most brilliant thinkers are in public service.”

National Institute of Standards and Technology worker William Phillips — a Nobel laureate in physics and recipient of NAPA and George Washington University’s Arthur S. Flemming award for feds — described the saying “close enough for government work” as a “nasty phrase.”

“The implication being that if you work for the government, you just have to get the job done, not the best job,” he said.

Phillips highlighted that NIST’s atomic clocks in the ‘70s accurately measured one part in 10^13 (i.e. error rate of one second every 300,000 years).

“Today, the best atomic clocks are good to better than one part in 10^18. That's less than one second in 14 billion years. My friends, 14 billion years ago was the dawn of the universe,” he said. “At [NIST] — where people are working every day to ensure the economic health and the national security of this country, now and in the future — this is what we call close enough for government.”

Kaity Wolfe — a senior State Department official who has been recognized by Leadership Connect’s Next Generation Leader Spotlight — said that she was initially nervous about speaking on the panel, as someone with relatively less government experience.

“But I’ve realized that being uncomfortable is part of public service,” she said.

Wolfe reflected on her time working for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, which reported as early as 2012 that U.S. efforts to support democracy in that country were falling short.

“That experience has taught me something that I've carried throughout my career ever since — that public service isn't about protecting institutions, it's about strengthening them,” she said. “It means being a good steward of taxpayer dollars, it means being transparent with the public and sometimes it means having the courage to say things that are uncomfortable and necessary.”

Kenneth Corbin — the chief of IRS Taxpayer Services and winner of the Service to the Citizen Award — touted that he started at the agency at 16-years-old as a GS-1, because he hadn’t yet graduated from high school, and has “had the pleasure of serving every grade in between” to his current position in the Senior Executive Service.

He shared that the public’s reaction to getting COVID-19 stimulus payments, which the IRS was responsible for distributing while also contending with remote work and the normal tax filing season, is one of the most memorable moments from his 40-year career.

“In this journey of service, was it the millions of payments that went out that made the difference? Was it the dollar amount that went out that made the difference? No,” he said. “What made the difference to our team was getting on social media and reading the messages from families who now had money to go buy milk, to buy food, to pay their bills. They appreciated the fact that that work was delivered, and Congress loved it so much that not once, not twice, but three times we delivered those payments.”

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The Medicare question federal retirees can’t ignore anymore

Tammy Flanagan — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 15:00:00 -0400

Just as Social Security is central to the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), Medicare may play an important role in meeting your health insurance needs in retirement. The 2026 Medicare Trustees Report, released on June 9, offers useful insight into future Medicare costs and why federal retirees should think carefully about whether adding Medicare to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHB) makes sense.

For federal civilian retirees covered by FEHB, the Medicare decision is often confusing for a few basic reasons:

You are not required to enroll in Medicare to keep FEHB coverage after age 65.
The Medicare Part B premium is substantial and, for some people, may equal or exceed the premium for their FEHB plan.
The choice is rarely as simple as dropping FEHB or skipping Medicare. More often, it comes down to whether adding Medicare to an FEHB plan that “wraps around” Medicare actually improves coverage enough to justify the added cost.
It is almost never advisable to drop FEHB coverage in retirement. Once you leave it, you generally cannot get it back.
The decision gets more complicated when one spouse or family member turns 65 while others remain ineligible for Medicare.
Medicare Part A (inpatient hospital care) and Part B (outpatient care, including doctor visits, lab work and testing) overlap significantly with services already covered under FEHB.

Note: To continue coverage under the Postal Service Health Benefits (PSHB) Program in retirement, you must enroll in Medicare Part B unless you qualify for an exception. For complete PSHB eligibility rules and exceptions, see guidance from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Part B premiums

According to the latest report, Medicare Part B premiums are expected to keep rising.

Most enrollees pay the standard premium — $202.90 per month in 2026 — which covers about 25% of the average program cost for an older beneficiary. Higher-income retirees also pay an Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount (IRMAA). For 2026, IRMAA applies when 2024 modified adjusted gross income exceeds $109,000 for single filers or $218,000 for joint filers. Higher-income retirees may also owe IRMAA surcharges for Part D coverage, even when their FEHB plan includes prescription drug coverage through the Medicare Prescription Drug Program at no additional premium.

Late enrollment can also add a permanent penalty. In most cases, the penalty equals 10% of the standard Part B premium for each full 12-month period enrollment is delayed after the initial enrollment period ends. People age 65 or older who are covered by health insurance from current employment may qualify for a special enrollment period and avoid the penalty if they enroll within eight months after that coverage ends.

Some beneficiaries pay less than the standard premium because of the hold harmless provision, which limits premium increases for individuals whose Social Security cost-of-living adjustment is smaller than the Medicare premium increase.

FEHB and Medicare

When deciding whether to enroll in Medicare while keeping FEHB, premiums are only part of the equation. Medicare may reduce out-of-pocket costs, expand provider options and make it worthwhile to choose an FEHB plan that coordinates more effectively with Medicare. That becomes especially relevant in years involving serious illness, injury or ongoing treatment.

The Trustees Report projects the following Part B premiums:

Year	Estimated monthly premium	Annual amount (per person)
2027	$209.50	$2,514.00
2028	$224.50	$2,694.00
2029	$238.50	$2,862.00
2030	$255.50	$3,066.00
2031	$272.10	$3,265.20
2032	$290.20	$3,482.40
2033	$313.60	$3,763.20
2034	$338.50	$4,062.00
2035	$360.60	$4,327.20

The value of combining FEHB with premium-free Part A and Part B depends heavily on how a specific FEHB plan coordinates with Medicare.

Some FEHB plans waive deductibles, copays and coinsurance when Medicare is the primary payer. In practice, that can significantly reduce out-of-pocket costs and, in some cases, offset much of the Part B premium for retirees with higher health care usage.

Examples include Blue Cross Blue Shield Basic Option and Standard Option, MHBP Consumer Plan and Standard, G.E.H.A. High Option and Standard, and Aetna Direct. These plans vary in premiums, provider networks, out-of-pocket maximums and Medicare coordination rules, so retirees need to compare full plan brochures rather than relying on summaries.

To evaluate options, retirees should review Section 4 for catastrophic protection and out-of-pocket maximums, the back cover for premiums and Section 9 for Medicare coordination details. Not all FEHB plans waive cost-sharing when Medicare is primary. The Office of Personnel Management provides a plan comparison tool, and the Checkbook Guide to Federal Health Plans is also widely used.

Some FEHB plans also provide Medicare Part B premium rebates. Examples include Blue Cross Blue Shield Basic Option ($800 annually per person), G.E.H.A. High Option ($1,000) and Aetna Direct ($900). These offsets can materially change the effective cost comparison between plans.

Plans that coordinate well with Medicare tend to fall into two broad patterns: lower-premium designs with stronger Medicare integration or higher-premium plans that trade cost for broader networks and simpler access. HMOs may appeal to retirees who want coordinated care and fewer administrative decisions, while fee-for-service plans may better suit those prioritizing provider flexibility.

FEHB and Medicare Part C, also known as Medicare Advantage

Retirees enrolled in Medicare Parts A and B may also have access to Medicare Advantage options through FEHB carriers. These employer group plans typically bundle medical, hospital and prescription drug coverage, though benefits vary by carrier and geography.

Common features include:

Lower premiums or reductions in Part B costs
Reduced or waived deductibles, coinsurance and copays
Fitness, wellness, home health or over-the-counter benefits
Prescription savings and, in some cases, broader networks or fewer referral requirements

Even as Medicare and FEHB premiums continue to rise, many retirees still find the combination worthwhile when plans include cost-sharing waivers, rebates or Medicare Advantage structures that shift more costs away from point-of-care spending. Higher-income retirees subject to IRMAA face a sharper calculation: higher fixed premiums today versus potential exposure to higher out-of-pocket costs later. For many, the decision is less about optimization than risk tolerance over time.

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Federal acquisition rewrite leaves cybersecurity confusion unresolved

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

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

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

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

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

The same rules are still there.

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

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

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

This is not simply a cybersecurity issue.

It is an acquisition issue.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet accountability works best when expectations are clear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Director of National Intelligence office cuts reach key coordination function

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Agencies look to AI to improve hiring and build workforce skills

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mid-career development

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

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

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

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

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

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A plan to dismantle DHS is moving from idea to legislation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump cancels signing ceremony

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

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

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

Turning over names

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

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

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

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

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

Dems urge Steiner to withdraw rule

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Absolutely,” Steiner replied.

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Bill would limit federal relocations to states with abortion restrictions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Space Force acquisition nominee faces ethics scrutiny over defense industry ties

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

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

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

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

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

Raytheon spokespeople did not return a request for comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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Education Department layoffs hindered congressionally mandated activities, inspector general reports

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

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

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

Some of the impacted activities included:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Education Inspector General

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The early years

The younger Greenspan cut a different figure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A professional turning point

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

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

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

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

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

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

Era of free markets

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

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

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

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

A reckoning after the crisis

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

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

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

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

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

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Federal acquisition overhaul moves from plan to proposed rules

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part 40 also is an attempt to harmonize security requirements.

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

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

This includes:

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

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

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Congressional Dems demand info on revised workforce survey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Lawmakers warn acting intelligence chief against major workforce changes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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