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USDA reshapes its food assistance agency, but employee relocations remain on hold

Jory Heckman — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 07:00:00 -0400

The Agriculture Department is proceeding with a reorganization of an agency that administers food assistance for millions of Americans.

The Food and Nutrition Service, which the Trump administration recently rebranded as the “Food and Nutrition Administration,” notified employees last week that the agency has officially restructured its operations.

The biggest part of this reorganization – relocating most FNS employees across the country – remains on hold, for now.

A federal judge in San Francisco placed a temporary hold on deadlines for all “management directed reassignment” letters USDA employees have received so far. That hold is scheduled to remain in place through Oct. 13.

FNS plans to relocate most of its staff to new “hubs” that USDA has established across the country, including in Indiana, Texas, Missouri and North Carolina. A union representing the agency’s workforce says these relocations will result in further staffing losses, putting its food assistance programs at risk of disruption.

Acting FNS Administrator Shiela Corley told employees in an Oct. 6 email that the agency “officially transitioned into our new organizational structure” at the start of fiscal 2027.

According to the email, FNS operations will focus on four separate organizations – State Support & Evaluation (SSE), Nutrition Research & Regulations (NRR), Benefits & Integrity (BI), and Retailer Operations & Compliance (ROC).

“Each of these organizations are led by Deputy Administrators and form the backbone of the agency,” Corley wrote. “They are responsible for national program administration, regulatory oversight, program integrity, and operational consistency across all our nutrition assistance programs.”

FNS employees told Government Executive it’s not yet clear what impact this stage of the reorganization will have on their day-to-day work.

“It broadly talks about restructure of work areas, but no details, no timeline, nothing,” one employee said about the email staff received.

“Not sure what this means on a day-to-day level, or how this will be impacted by the larger reorg,” a second employee said. “As far as I am aware, we don’t have any additional guidance from managers, either.”

Corley wrote that the agency has “received numerous questions about how FNA programs will be organized under our new structure,” and that it will provide more information in additional biweekly updates throughout FY 2027.

An employee in USDA’s IT shop recently received a notice about an upcoming reorganization of the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO).

“I have a new immediate supervisor, but the same executive leadership. IT is not making anyone move with their re-org. But it is a dramatic change, so how the new org is going to operate seems very much up in the air,” the USDA IT employee said.

According to the USDA IT employee, a reorganization of the OCIO was also supposed to go into effect on Oct. 1, but has been pushed back to mid-December because of “processing delays at HR.”

USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A coalition of federal employee labor unions, nonprofits and local governments is suing USDA over its reorganization plans. Plaintiffs argue the relocations are a veiled attempt by USDA to further shrink its workforce. USDA already cut its workforce by about 20,000 employees largely through voluntary separation incentives last year – about a fifth of its total workforce.

FNS has shed about 30% of its workforce under the second Trump administration. About one-third of its remaining 1,200 employees currently live in the Washington, D.C. region.

The National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 226, which represents FNS employees, says more than 80% of staff who took an internal survey claim they will not relocate to keep their jobs.

FNS oversees 16 nutrition programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Women, Infants and Children, that collectively serve one-in-four Americans annually.

USDA leaders say the reorganization and relocations will improve customer service, and not result in any disruption to agency programs. A senior USDA official told the court in August that out of the 725 USDA employees who have received relocation letters so far, and that 64% of them have accepted reassignment.

Employees say that figure is inflated, and that some individuals accepted relocation notices because it is the only way they can proceed with a request for a hardship or medical exemption. Other say they've opted into relocation only to buy themselves more time to find a job that would keep them in the D.C. area.

U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria recently issued an administrative stay of USDA’s relocations while he decides whether or not to grant a preliminary injunction that would indefinitely bar USDA from carrying out relocation plans for about 2,600 employees.

In a recent hearing, Chhabria questioned how much authority Congress and its appropriations committees have over USDA’s reorganization decisions.

Lawmakers included a provision in the fiscal 2026 appropriations bill for USDA that blocked officials from reorganizing or relocating offices or employees without approval from the House and Senate appropriations committees.

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The Pentagon gave $350 million in contracts to a firm closely tied to a senior Defense Department official

Aaron C. Davis and Robert Faturechi, ProPublica — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 16:16:32 -0400

Among a cadre of Wall Street executives brought into the Pentagon during President Donald Trump’s second term, George K. Kollitides II has emerged as a powerbroker with a broad mandate to improve procurement of weapons and critical minerals.

The longtime partner at the private equity firm Alvarez & Marsal Capital has framed his tour of duty in government as a service to the country. But the work he’s leading has also been a boon to his old friends in the private sector, government procurement records show.

In April, months after Kollitides had started work at the Pentagon, he was listed on a securities filing as continuing to work for his old company as a senior adviser. Two months later, the Defense Department finalized a $281 million no-bid consulting contract with an affiliate firm, Alvarez & Marsal Federal, to advise Kollitides’ new Pentagon office, the records show.

That contract, large for consulting work even by Defense Department standards, is the second in a pair of deals that since December have awarded almost $350 million in military spending to the firm — about five times more than Alvarez & Marsal entities had received from all U.S. agencies combined in the two decades before Trump returned to office, according to federal spending data. Both of those contracts have been for work connected to Pentagon offices where Kollitides is the head or has a senior role.

The deals remain shrouded in secrecy, records show, because they were signed under an unusual contracting method the Defense Department uses to fund experimental weapons — work A&M has never claimed to do. They have begun to send unprecedented sums of taxpayer money to a company that boasts helping government agencies create a “customer-centric culture” and that is deeply intertwined with the private equity firm where Kollitides was a partner for almost 10 years. The two partner firms tag-team investment deals and share back-office support, company documents and federal filings show.

Kollitides was still working with A&M Capital when the deals were signed. It’s unclear if he will benefit financially from the windfall of military spending on A&M consulting. His employment at the Pentagon is under a special classification that allows him to keep his financial disclosures confidential.

Ethics experts said it’s generally illegal for executive branch officials to play a role in awarding contracts that would have a direct impact on their own finances, unless they were granted a waiver.

“It looks way too cozy to be legitimate. I think taxpayers should be appalled,” said Virginia Canter, a former federal government ethics lawyer. “There are a million consulting firms in D.C. and New York. Why would you sole source this contract? They’re not sending replacement parts for a ship that is sinking.”

After ProPublica sent questions to the Pentagon, Kollitides and both A&M entities early this week, A&M Capital said Kollitides had just stopped working there days earlier.

In a statement, A&M Capital said it is a “separately capitalized and separately managed firm from the Alvarez & Marsal consulting business” and its “management and employees have no involvement in the day-to-day operations of the consulting business, and vice versa.” The firm said that none of Kollitides’ work for it related to the “defense industry, the Department of War or Mr. Kollitides’ government service.”

The Alvarez & Marsal consulting business did not answer any of ProPublica’s questions, including how it became aware of the possibility that it could seek the $281 million no-bid contract and what services it is providing to Kollitides’ Pentagon team. The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported the existence of some of the Alvarez & Marsal contracting.

“We are proud to serve clients across all industries, and all levels of government,” the company said in a statement. “The common denominator is always the same: we help solve difficult problems.”

“It looks way too cozy to be legitimate. I think taxpayers should be appalled.”
Virginia Canter, former federal government ethics lawyer

Kollitides did not respond to questions about whether he played a role in A&M securing contracts to work for his office, but a Pentagon spokesperson replied for the department and on Kollitides’ behalf saying they both followed all applicable rules.

“The Department of War maintains a rigorous, multi-layered ethics framework that includes financial disclosure reviews, divestitures where appropriate, and screening to prevent conflicts of interest,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Jacob Bliss wrote in an email. Kollitides, he added, “is in full compliance with all ethical laws and regulations. Any claims otherwise are false.”

There is widespread bipartisan agreement that the Pentagon’s procurement systems are in need of radical reform and private-sector know-how could help the country better secure supply lines and accelerate the development of new weapons to ensure the military is prepared to fight future wars.

But current and former defense officials say the massive spending for connected consultants is a reflection of a changed Defense Department under Trump. They say a clubby and politicized culture has taken hold in a wing of the Pentagon controlled by Kollitides and other former Wall Street executives recruited by Steve Feinberg, the billionaire private-equity titan who is now the deputy defense secretary. It’s an operation, they say, that favors people and companies that have close ties to the administration.

This year, ProPublica reported that the Office of Strategic Capital, a unit at the Pentagon that Kollitides helps lead, granted a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr. a $620 million loan after a top aide to the president intervened on the company’s behalf. A group of Democratic lawmakers accused the office of “a staggering level of corruption and influence peddling.”

ProPublica also reported that the same Pentagon unit was considering a loan to Unusual Machines, a second company connected to the president’s son. A defense official told ProPublica recently that the unit is now in the late stages of a $220 million loan for the Florida drone parts maker, where Trump Jr. sits on the advisory board and was granted a stake.

The Pentagon did not respond to a question about the advancing loan process for Unusual Machines and if Trump Jr.’s connections were playing a part. After the earlier loan to a Trump-connected company, the Pentagon said “no company receives preferential treatment” and “political connections play absolutely no role in the Department’s funding decisions.” Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson pushed back on criticism, saying the Defense Department is conducting extensive due diligence on potential lending.

That Pentagon lending unit was launched during the Biden administration with an open application process for interested companies. Current and former officials and people who have interacted with the office say Kollitides and other leaders now rely more on their own personal networks to choose companies to fund — as well as the consultants to vet those deals.

Multiple Pentagon Hats

That reliance on personal networks is how Kollitides got to the Pentagon.

Feinberg first hired Kollitides more than two decades ago.

Then a rising private-equity star who had graduated from Columbia Business School, Kollitides moved up the ranks at Cerberus, Feinberg’s firm, taking the reins of its aerospace, defense and government groups. In 2012, Kollitides took on an especially sensitive and more public job for the private-equity giant. Kollitides was named chief executive of a Cerberus company combining Remington, the nation’s oldest gun maker, with more than a dozen other firearms and parts companies, eliminating hundreds of jobs from New York to Georgia to Montana.

After three years with the Cerberus-owned gunmaker, Kollitides left and became a partner at Alvarez & Marsal Capital, an offshoot of A&M consulting, whose co-founder also had long-standing business ties to Feinberg.

Some former business associates said they were not surprised that Kollitides jumped at the chance to rejoin Feinberg at the Pentagon. The two share a love for firearms and defense industry investments. They have also both described their work addressing the military’s most vexing supply chain issues as a patriotic calling.

“Americans need us at the Pentagon and our civilians and our contractors to do better,” Feinberg said last year. “We can’t fail, we can’t make excuses, we must succeed.”

On social media, Kollitides has shown the kind of partisanship long taboo in the Pentagon but now fostered in its ranks by Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Kollitides has decried the “Democrat Party,” warned of the ills of socialism and posted that “the government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.”

Over the last year, Feinberg has continued to heap responsibility on Kollitides: naming him his co-chief of staff and senior adviser; vice chairman of the Office of Strategic Capital’s investment committee; and director of two other new offices, the Economic Defense Unit and the Business Operators for National Defense, or BOND — the office with the $281 million no-bid contract.

His employment status allowing him to hold any of those roles at the Pentagon is somewhat of a mystery.

Unlike Feinberg, who was confirmed to his post by the Senate, Kollitides was reportedly first brought onto the federal government last year as a special government employee, or SGE, a designation that allows someone to work in government for no more than 130 days a year. Kollitides seemingly exceeded that cap several months ago.

But in the Pentagon’s email system, Kollitides’ name now carries an abbreviation signifying he has been designated an HQE, or highly qualified expert. His employment classification, which the Pentagon confirmed, is designed to hire people who bring “enlightened thinking and innovation” to Defense Department roles that can last up to six years.

That distinction brings a unique benefit for Kollitides. Financial disclosures filed by HQEs are generally confidential, while those of high-ranking SGEs are often subject to release once a person fills a government role for more than 60 days. It’s unclear if Pentagon ethics officials granted Kollitides a waiver to keep any disclosures confidential.

(ProPublica requested Kollitides’ financial disclosure forms in August, but the Pentagon has not yet responded.)

Kollitides’ continued tie to Alvarez & Marsal Capital surfaced in April in a securities filing by a second company with which the defense official was taking a leadership post.

Days after Feinberg named him the head of BOND, granting Kollitides deep visibility into weapons production rates of U.S. military contractors, Kollitides took a seat on the board of D. Boral Acquisition I, an offshore shell company whose affiliate D. Boral Capital has partnered with defense-related businesses. Bloomberg Government first reported the filing in July, and that Kollitides stepped down from the position at the end of September.

Kollitides’ biography in the filing described his current roles at the Pentagon, then added that “he is also a Senior Advisor” to Alvarez & Marsal Capital and that he previously was a partner and co-head of one the firm’s funds.

The A&M entity that Kollitides is described as still advising in the filing is essentially the private-equity partner of the sprawling Alvarez & Marsal firm that includes A&M Federal, which is now providing consulting services for his offices at the Pentagon.

Though the private-equity and consulting businesses are distinct, they work together, share back-office staff for human resources and tech support, and have overlapping ownership, according to company documents. The private-equity arm describes itself as having a “strategic relationship” with the consulting side of A&M. The firm boosts its investment decision-making by working with the consulting firm’s thousands of employees around the globe to assess particular companies. And after the fund takes a stake in a company, it deploys the consulting arm’s employees to improve that firm’s operations and make the company more valuable.

In other words, the fund’s success hinges on the consulting firm’s.

Whether Kollitides violated government ethics rules hinges on details that he and the Pentagon have declined to provide.

A Defense Department official told ProPublica that Kollitides “does not and has never had” any investments or financial relations with A&M consulting. The official said Kollitides is also “recused on any conflicted matters related to A&M Capital,” which could be referring to Defense Department decisions related to companies A&M Capital has a financial stake in.

Ethics experts said that without a written waiver, executive branch officials are generally barred from participating in decisions, such as the awarding of a contract, that would have a direct impact on their financial interests. That law, the experts said, could apply even if the official doesn’t have a stake in a company but just draws a salary — the rationale being that they’ve improved the odds that the company will be able to continue paying them.

The Pentagon official did not answer specific questions about whether Kollitides was being compensated by A&M Capital when the contracts were signed, if he played any role in the contract decision-making process or if he sought or received an exemption to do so.

A “Blank Sheet of Paper” Contract

A&M’s first contract with the Pentagon was signed in December, months after Kollitides joined the government. That $67.6 million deal was awarded to Alvarez & Marsal Federal through a Defense Department entity focused on efforts to strengthen the nation’s industrial base.

The full scope of work that A&M provided is unclear. But documents reviewed by ProPublica show that by late last year, the firm had begun helping to vet possible loan deals for the Office of Strategic Capital, the lending unit then run in part by Kollitides.

Like that first contract, the larger, $281 million deal that followed to advise Kollitides’ BOND office came in the form of what is called an OTA, or other transaction agreement, which allows agencies to bypass regular federal contracting rules on public disclosure and oversight.

Congress first authorized the Defense Department to use the contracting method in the 1980s to fund breakthrough technologies without publicly disclosing much about the work. The Pentagon has increasingly turned to OTA contracts over the last decade to quickly fund a broader range of one-time costs, including prototype weapons and urgent production needs, even as government auditors have lamented OTAs as a “blank sheet of paper” arrangement with little oversight or accountability.

Still, experts said an OTA contract for consulting work was extraordinary. That’s because consulting is one of the simplest services the military can buy, and it has a long history of doing so through competitive bidding. Firms often publish the hourly costs for their associates, managers and other work before solicitations are posted.

But like black-box OTA contracts for secret weapons systems, the funding mechanism has hidden from public view details of what taxpayers are getting for the money.

The sheer size of the A&M contract stunned experts.

At $281,089,206.65, the consulting contract is among the largest OTAs funded through the Defense Department’s main support division in the last decade, including for top secret semiconductor projects and underwater drones, records show.

The Pentagon has said little about the impact of BOND since Hegseth claimed in February that the new entity would revolutionize military purchasing.

The defense secretary said that under the program, the military would embed former corporate executives, or, as he put it, “elite, private-sector patriots” to help optimize and accelerate the manufacturing of critical munitions. Hegseth said he thought the exercise would help the Pentagon increase resiliency in supply chains. The “era of managed decline is over,” he said.

In private recruitment materials for those executives, as well as for candidates to fill posts in other Kollitides-run units, the stakes and the mission for BOND were described in even starker terms: Neoliberalism and trade deals have left the U.S. as a country that “can no longer manufacture ships, munitions or planes in a timely manner.”

The recruiting materials cast the job of fixing that systemic problem as part-time work: “Recently retired Fortune 100 executives spend five days per month solving public- and private-sector operational challenges,” read pages viewed by ProPublica.

Two people familiar with A&M’s work for BOND said the firm’s consultants have accompanied former executives on trips to review work at major defense contractors such as Lockheed, Boeing, RTX and BAE Systems. BAE acknowledged a visit by BOND representatives but declined to comment further. Lockheed, Boeing, RTX and other companies contacted by ProPublica did not respond to requests for comment.

Contracting experts said that A&M is likely not guaranteed the full amount, and that contracts like these typically span several years, but records show A&M has already been paid about $31 million.

Not everyone, however, is welcome to participate.

One former military officer who worked in the defense industry told ProPublica he was contacted by an outside recruiter for Kollitides’ new BOND office. The recruiter, he said, told him that all applicants would be asked who they voted for.

The former military officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution, said he expressed discomfort with that line of questioning. He received an email shortly after from the recruiter telling him he was no longer under consideration. The Pentagon did not respond to a question about the officer’s account.

“Getting more effective and efficient is not a political question,” the former officer said.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.

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8 midterm races for federal employees to watch

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 15:51:59 -0400

The Trump administration’s efforts to downsize and remake the federal workforce could be curtailed if Democrats win back a majority in the House and/or Senate during the midterm congressional elections on Nov. 3.

Here are eight competitive congressional races for federal employees to watch, many of which feature lawmakers who are involved with the annual agency funding process or veterans’ issues.

1. Maine Senate

Susan Collins — the chair of the Appropriations Committee, which is responsible for allocating funding among most federal agencies — is up for re-election in a close race. A Republican, she frequently breaks with the president, including over funding for inspectors general and impoundments, which is when the executive branch delays or withholds congressionally approved spending.

Her Democratic opponent is Troy Jackson, the former Senate president of Maine. While in the state legislature, he sponsored legislation to provide no-interest loans to federal employees in Maine during a government shutdown. The state enacted an identical bill last year after Jackson had left the Maine Senate.

Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss up.

2. Iowa’s 1st Congressional District

Mariannette Miller-Meeks is the top Republican on the House Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Veterans Health Administration, which cares for more than 9.1 million veterans. She also has sponsored legislation, which is named after an Iowa corrections officer who died by suicide, that would promote mental health screenings and referrals for Bureau of Prisons employees.

Democrat Christina Bohannan, a law professor, is challenging Miller-Meeks for the third time. She is endorsed by the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union.

Cook Political Report rates the race as lean Democrat.

3. Ohio’s 9th Congressional District

Democrat Marcy Kaptur is a senior appropriator on the subcommittee that oversees the Army Corps of Engineers and Energy Department. In response to the Trump administration’s impoundment of agency funding, she introduced legislation that would require senior federal employees to take annual training on the budget process.

Her opponent is Derek Merrin, a former GOP Ohio state representative. While in the state legislature, he supported a public employee right-to-work bill.

Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss up.

4. Texas’ 28th Congressional District

Henry Cuellar is the top Democrat on the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Homeland Security Department, to which congressional Republicans have provided billions in additional funding for immigration enforcement.

He is a moderate Democrat. In 2024, Cuellar and his wife were charged with bribery, conspiracy and money laundering. Trump, however, later pardoned them.

Tano Tijerina, a county judge, is the GOP nominee for the seat. On his campaign website, he says that he wants to make Washington, D.C., more like Texas, which means “less bureaucracy, more action.”

Cook Political Report rates the race as lean Democrat.

5. Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District

Republican Jen Kiggans is the chairwoman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Her coastal district is home to tens of thousands of military personnel and federal employees. Last year, she introduced legislation to ensure that members of the armed services, Defense Department civilians and contractors and U.S. Coast Guard staffers would receive pay on a normal schedule despite the fall government shutdown.

Kiggans is in a rematch race against former Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, who is known for serving on the House panel that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss up.

6. Georgia Senate

Jon Ossoff is the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee panel that oversees military construction and the VA. He has criticized the administration’s proposed fiscal 2027 VA budget for directing funding increases toward private sector care.

Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., is challenging Ossoff for the position. Media outlets have reported several instances in which Collins’ staffers or family members have shared Nazi or Ku Klux Klan imagery.

Cook Political Report rates the race as likely Democrat.

7. Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District

Republican Derrick Van Orden is the chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs panel that oversees veteran education, employment and housing programs. He’s also backed efforts to block the president’s attempts to remove collective bargaining rights for Defense Department employees.

His Democratic challenger is Rebecca Cooke, a small business owner and nonprofit leader.

Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss up.

8. Texas Senate

Whoever wins this state’s Senate race will represent more than 130,000 federal employees, one of the largest headcounts in the country.

Republican Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, said that he would support cutting federal benefits programs, according to leaked audio from a private fundraiser. Paxton was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 for abuse of power but was acquitted by the state Senate.

Democrat James Talarico is a state representative endorsed by AFGE for his “100% pro-labor voting record.”

Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Watchdog to examine summertime hack of DHS information network, other incidents

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 09:00:00 -0400

A forthcoming audit of a key Department of Homeland Security information-sharing network will examine three known security incidents that occurred on agency networks, including an intrusion by outside hackers that Nextgov/FCW first reported this summer, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The review concerns the Homeland Security Information Network, or HSIN, which allows government agencies, law enforcement and other approved partners to exchange sensitive but unclassified information. Its users rely on the platform to share threat reporting, coordinate security for major events and respond to emergencies.

The Government Accountability Office review is expected to document the incidents that occurred between 2023 and 2026 and potentially scrutinize DHS for failing to promptly notify Congress about those security problems, the first person said.

The audit is being conducted in response to a directive in the fiscal 2025 defense policy package, the second person said. Both people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the review. It’s not clear when the final report will be released.

The previously unreported scope of the audit places this summer’s intrusion within a longer history of security problems on the platform. It also raises questions about whether DHS has given Congress and HSIN stakeholder organizations enough detail to understand what may have been exposed.

GAO has identified two incidents stemming from employee and contractor errors, while the most recent involved a malicious actor whose affiliation remains unknown, the first person said.

In 2023, a contractor’s coding error allowed HSIN users to access restricted information they were not authorized to see, according to a memo previously obtained by Nextgov/FCW. Another similar incident occurred in 2025, the first person said.

Having an HSIN account does not automatically give a user access to everything on the platform. Information is organized into restricted groups, called communities of interest, focused on particular threats, regions or missions. A police official in a border state seeking information about cartel activity, for example, could request admission to a relevant group, with an administrator deciding whether to grant access.

The security incidents have also strained partners’ confidence in the network, according to the first person. Staff at some fusion centers — state and local hubs that bring together law enforcement and other partners to analyze and share threat information — do not know whether their files were accessed without authorization during the various incidents, the person said.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the Senate Intelligence Committee’s vice chairman, previously said HSIN supported security coordination for this summer’s World Cup and America250 events and that the network’s exposure “risks national security.”

During the most recent intrusion, DHS analysts twice dismissed suspicious activity as harmless, allowing hackers to remain inside for weeks, Nextgov/FCW reported in July. An internal incident readout showed suspicious activity beginning in mid-May. By June 4, the intruders had installed hidden access points and stolen credential data used to authenticate access to accounts or systems, prompting personnel to declare an active breach.

It remains unclear what data, if any, was pilfered from the network.

A DHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an earlier statement, the department said it was “aware of a recent cyber incident involving a specific, unclassified legacy information sharing environment” and had isolated affected systems, addressed the vulnerability and begun a forensic investigation.

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Bureau of Prisons re-terminates union contracts despite court order

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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VA rolls out CLEAR login option and in-person identity verification pilot

Edward Graham — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 18:20:00 -0400

The Department of Veterans Affairs announced on Wednesday that it has rolled out a new identity verification login option from CLEAR and established a pilot program at six medical facilities to help veterans create online VA accounts in person.

The new services are billed as part of a broader digital modernization effort being spearheaded by GovCIO to enhance VA’s online services and integrate the CLEAR1 security identity platform onto the VA.gov website.

Veterans now have the opportunity to voluntarily create CLEAR accounts to access their VA services using facial recognition. The agency’s platform also offers other log-in services that use biometrics for identity verification, like Login.gov — the government’s single sign-on service for federal and state platforms — and ID.me — another private sector offering that can be used to verify users of federal platforms.

Veterans who create CLEAR accounts can also use the service to sign into Medicare.gov through a similar partnership announced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services earlier this year.

The CLEAR accounts used to access VA.gov are different from those operated by the company that allow users to access CLEAR-verified airport security lines.

“Veterans want better customer service and convenience, and under President [Donald] Trump, VA is delivering,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement. “This technology is another way we’re changing VA to put Veterans first and make it easier for those who have worn the uniform to get the care and benefits they’ve earned.”

In addition to the new login option, VA is deploying CLEAR pods at selected medical sites to help veterans create identity verification accounts while at the facilities. Veterans who visit these biometric verification kiosks with the proper identifications can have their photos taken and then used to create CLEAR accounts.

The on-site identity verification pilot is now active at VA facilities in Atlanta, Georgia; Brooklyn, New York; Orlando, Florida; Palo Alto, California; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Washington, D.C.

During a Wednesday interview on CBS Mornings, CLEAR CEO Caryn Seidman Becker said veterans can go to VA.gov and verify their identities with “one selfie, and you’re in.” She said the CLEAR pods’ pilot program will also allow the firm “to meet veterans where they are and help them to enroll there.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Don’t let 5% become your TSP retirement strategy

Tammy Flanagan — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 15:00:00 -0400

Should you lower your TSP contributions before retirement? A 5% contribution can secure the full FERS agency contribution, but that does not necessarily make it the best choice for employees nearing retirement. Here’s what to weigh before changing your contribution rate, from taxes and cash flow to long-term savings.

TSP considerations when you are near retirement

Today’s column was inspired by a recent email from an employee who is nearing retirement and wants to know some of the pros and cons of reducing her TSP contributions to 5%, which is the amount that is subject to agency matching.

For federal employees covered by the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), contributing 5% of basic pay to the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) generally captures the full agency contribution. The first 3% is matched dollar-for-dollar, and the next 2% is matched at 50 cents on the dollar.

Combined with the Agency Automatic 1% Contribution, an employee who contributes 5% receives agency contributions equal to 5% of basic pay. That makes 5% an important floor, but not necessarily the ideal ceiling.

For an employee who is retiring in late 2026 or spring 2027, the decision to contribute more turns on the balance between current cash needs, taxes and the long-term value of additional retirement savings.

That decision begins with the annual contribution limits. For 2026, the employee elective-deferral limit is $24,500, shared by traditional and Roth employee contributions. Participants who are at least 50 may also make catch-up contributions: up to $8,000 for most eligible participants or $11,250 for those who turn 60, 61, 62 or 63 during 2026. Agency automatic and matching contributions do not count against the $24,500 employee limit.

Because these limits can change from year to year, employees who are not retiring in 2026 should watch for the annual update. The IRS reviews the limits using cost-of-living adjustments tied to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), as required by federal law.

When inflation warrants an increase, the contribution caps rise in statutory increments, such as the $1,000 increase in the elective-deferral limit from 2025 to 2026. The IRS typically announces the following year’s retirement plan adjustments in late October or November. For example, the TSP published its 2026 contribution-limit announcement in mid-November 2025.

The annual limit is only part of the calculation; timing matters as well. To receive a maximum of 5% in agency automatic and matching contributions, you must contribute at least 5% of basic pay each pay period.

If you reach the annual elective-deferral limit early and payroll contributions stop, matching contributions also stop for the remaining pay periods. Employees who want the full-year match should therefore spread their contributions across all pay periods in the year or, if retiring, over all the pay periods leading to their retirement date.

Recent TSP statistics show that nearly nine in 10 contributing FERS participants save at least 5% of basic pay, but the published monthly data do not distinguish between employees contributing exactly 5% and those contributing more.

Learn more about elective deferral limits by reading the TSP fact sheet, “Annual Limit on Elective Deferrals.”

Separate plan-wide data, not limited to FERS employees, show a strong relationship between the length of time participants contribute and the balances they accumulate. As of March 2025, the following balance groups had these average contribution histories:

Limiting contributions to 5% may offer several advantages, especially for employees approaching retirement:

More money in each paycheck. Reducing your contribution rate can free up cash for an emergency fund, debt repayment, relocation, health expenses or the transition from your final paycheck to your first retirement benefit payment. This flexibility may be especially valuable because retirement claims can take time to finalize.
Full agency contributions can continue. Contributing 5% in every pay period generally allows you to receive the full FERS agency contribution while reducing the risk of reaching the annual employee limit before year-end.
Limited short-term effect near retirement. If you plan to retire within a few months, the difference between contributing 5% and a higher rate applies to only a limited number of pay periods. When your retirement savings are already sufficient, using some of that cash for a specific transition expense may be reasonable.

Those benefits, however, must be weighed against the potential costs of limiting contributions to 5% of basic pay:

Use-it-or-lose-it contribution opportunity. Once the calendar year ends, you generally cannot make up unused TSP contribution room for that year. Contributing less now could mean missing the chance to invest thousands of additional dollars in the TSP.
Less time for your savings to grow. Although you may not consider contributions above 5% when you are near retirement very important, remember that contributions made shortly before retirement can remain invested for many years. Contributing less now reduces the amount available for future compounded growth.
A potentially higher tax bill this year. You may not be increasing your take-home pay as much as you think. Traditional TSP contributions reduce your current taxable income. Lowering them may increase your federal and possibly state income tax, particularly during a final high-earning year.
Less tax flexibility in retirement. Roth TSP contributions are made after tax, but qualified withdrawals are tax-free. Reducing Roth contributions may leave you with fewer options for managing taxable income later, especially because Roth TSP balances are not subject to required minimum distributions during your lifetime.
A greater risk of spending instead of saving. Extra take-home pay improves your retirement readiness only if you use it for a specific financial purpose. If you simply spend the difference, you will enter retirement with fewer assets and no offsetting benefit.

How SECURE Act 2.0 changes the calculation

The choice is further impacted by changes enacted under SECURE Act 2.0. For employees making a near-term contribution decision, the most significant change is the mandatory Roth treatment of certain catch-up contributions beginning in 2026.

The rule applies to an employee who is eligible to make catch-up contributions, generally because the employee will be 50 or older in 2026, and who has 2025 FICA wages from the TSP-covered federal employer that exceeded $150,000.

In other words, 2025 wages of $150,000.01 or more trigger the Roth requirement, while wages of exactly $150,000 or less do not. The test uses prior-year wages from the employer sponsoring the plan, not the employee’s 2026 salary, adjusted gross income or total household income.

Only 2026 contributions above the $24,500 regular elective-deferral limit must be Roth; the rule does not require the employee’s first $24,500 of TSP contributions to be Roth. Employees at or below the threshold may generally choose traditional or Roth treatment for catch-up savings. Because the wage threshold is indexed for inflation, it may change in later years.

The law also raised the required minimum distribution (RMD) starting age from 72 to 73 beginning in 2023 and will raise it to 75 in 2033. It also eliminated lifetime RMDs from a participant’s Roth TSP balance beginning in 2024, reduced the excise tax for missed RMDs and created a larger catch-up limit for participants ages 60 through 63 beginning in 2025.

Taken together, these considerations make 5% a useful benchmark rather than a universal recommendation. It is usually the minimum sensible contribution rate for a FERS employee who wants the full match, but it is not automatically the best rate near retirement.

Before reducing contributions, project them by pay date so the 5% election continues through the final pay period, estimate the tax effect of losing traditional deductions and identify a specific purpose for the additional take-home pay.

Employees affected by the Roth catch-up rule should also compare their expected tax rate in 2026 with their likely tax rate in retirement. Because retirement dates, payroll calendars, FICA wages and tax circumstances differ, employees should confirm their election with their payroll office and consult a qualified tax or financial professional before acting.

Checklist for retirement readiness

Use this checklist to test whether your expected retirement income can support your desired lifestyle, withstand unexpected costs and remain sustainable over a long retirement.

First things first, confirm your retirement eligibility:

Confirm that you meet the age and service requirements for an immediate FERS retirement.
Verify your service computation date and resolve any missing or incorrect service records.
Determine whether you have any outstanding military or temporary civilian service deposits and compare your retirement estimate with and without making these payments.
Compare estimates for two different retirement dates to determine the impact on your monthly income from the FERS basic retirement benefit, Social Security or the FERS Supplement and potential income from your TSP investment.
If retiring under the MRA + 10 provisions, consider the benefit of working longer to avoid the age reduction vs. postponing your retirement application.
If retiring under age 62, compare the benefit of the enhanced annuity calculation factor of 1.1% instead of 1.0% if you will have 20 or more years of service by age 62.

Compute your “net” retirement income:

Obtain an official or agency-prepared estimate of your gross FERS annuity, including the FERS retirement supplement, if eligible.
Be sure to estimate reductions to your FERS retirement benefit that may include:
- Survivor benefit elections for a current spouse
- Court-ordered survivor benefit requirements for a former spouse
- Part-time work schedule proration
- Alternative annuity actuarial reduction
- Offset for Social Security (CSRS Offset coverage only)
- Unpaid deposits or redeposits (CSRS only)
Service not covered by retirement deductions is not creditable under FERS; compute retirement estimates without service where retirement deductions were not withheld or deposited. Noncovered civilian service performed after 1988 is not creditable and not eligible for a service credit deposit.
Estimate withholdings from your monthly benefit that may include:
- Federal income tax
- State income tax
- Insurance premiums (FEHB, FEGLI, FEDVIP, FLTCIP)
- Court-ordered apportionment payable to a former spouse
Review your Social Security estimate at several claiming ages, including at age 62, your full retirement age (67 if born in 1960 or later) and age 70.
If retiring at 65 or later, consider the cost of Medicare Part B premiums.
Estimate income from your TSP, IRAs, spouse benefits, pensions, part-time work and other sources.
Calculate expected after-tax monthly income rather than relying on gross amounts.
Identify which income sources are guaranteed and which depend on investment performance.
Identify which income sources will receive cost-of-living adjustments and when they are applicable to help maintain buying power in the future.

Cash reserves and retirement spending plan

Build a retirement budget that separates essential expenses from discretionary spending.
Compare the estimated net income you will have in retirement to your current net income while employed.
Account for irregular expenses and inflation rather than using current monthly bills alone.
Compare projected income with projected spending and calculate the annual amount your savings must provide.
Maintain an accessible emergency reserve so you are not forced to sell investments during a market decline.
Try living on your projected retirement income for several months before retiring if you expect to have less net income in retirement.

TSP and investment strategy

Confirm that your contribution rate captures the full agency match through your final eligible pay period.
Estimate your TSP balance at retirement under conservative, expected and unfavorable market scenarios.
Decide how much you expect to withdraw in the first year and whether that amount is sustainable.
Review your traditional and Roth balances and the tax treatment of future withdrawals.
Check whether your investment allocation matches your time horizon, income needs and tolerance for market declines.
Understand the differences among installments, partial withdrawals, rollovers and a TSP annuity before choosing a distribution method.
Include outstanding TSP loans in your retirement plan and understand the consequences of separation from service.

Consider your health, insurance needs and long-term risks to your financial security:

Verify eligibility to continue Federal Employees Health Benefits coverage into retirement.
Consider coordination of FEHB coverage with Medicare Parts A and B when you become eligible.
Review Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance choices and the cost of coverage as you age.
Consider how you would pay for long-term care, extended home assistance or assisted living.
Test whether your plan can withstand higher medical costs, a long life and several years of elevated inflation.

Taxes, debt and survivor planning

Estimate federal and state taxes on your annuity, Social Security, traditional TSP withdrawals and other income.
Evaluate whether Roth withdrawals or conversions could improve future tax flexibility.
Decide how mortgages, consumer debt and other obligations will be handled before and after retirement.
Compare FERS survivor annuity options and their effect on your monthly benefit and a spouse’s future financial security and continued FEHB eligibility.
Review beneficiary designations for the TSP, Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance, unpaid compensation and retirement (FERS or CSRS).
Update your will, powers of attorney, health care directives and instructions for locating important records.

Test your retirement readiness

Your projected after-tax income covers essential and discretionary spending with a reasonable margin.
Your plan remains workable if markets decline early in retirement, inflation is higher than expected or you live longer than expected.
You have enough accessible cash for emergencies and the possible delay between your final paycheck and finalized annuity payments.
You and your spouse or partner understand income, insurance, survivor and withdrawal decisions.
You have reviewed the plan with your agency’s retirement specialist and, when appropriate, a qualified tax or financial professional.

Readiness benchmark: A specific TSP balance alone does not establish readiness. A stronger test is whether dependable and investment income can cover expected after-tax expenses, preserve an emergency reserve and remain sustainable under less favorable assumptions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Orleans before Hurricane Ida in 2021 Credit: NASA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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What happens when the State Department loses its institutional memory?

Donald Heflin, The Conversation — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 15:05:24 -0400

Just before leaving town on Sept. 30, 2026, U.S. senators confirmed 10 new ambassadors. Among those nodded through before Congress closed for an extended midterm recess were new U.S. ambassadors for Kenya, Nicaragua, Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan.

That’s commendable – many of those countries hold geographical or strategic importance for U.S. diplomacy. But it still leaves 92 out of 196 ambassador jobs currently unfilled. In some of those cases, the White House has not sent names to Capitol Hill despite the second Trump administration being a year and a half into the job. In others, the Senate, which is controlled by the same party as the White House, hasn’t acted on the names put forward.

Regardless of the reason, as a former ambassador and an expert in the process of diplomacy, I find the current vacancies concerning. Among those embassies still without a top person in place are key partners for the U.S. – countries that Washington needs to achieve its security, economic and strategic objectives.

What makes these vacancies more worrying, in my view, is that they come amid other concerning developments in the State Department’s staffing of embassies.

Politicizing diplomacy

Chief among them are the high percentage of politically appointed ambassadors relative to positions filled by career diplomats – that is, senior foreign service officers, usually with at least 20 years of diplomatic experience.

Though many countries send politicians abroad as ambassadors, America’s diplomatic service is unique in two ways. The percentage of U.S. ambassadors who are political appointees – those who haven’t followed a career civil service path – is higher than comparative countries across the world. Second, those political appointees are often donors with little to no government experience.

The practice has existed for decades, but in recent years the number of political appointees has increased. During the Obama administration, the percentage of political appointees was around 30%. The number rose to around 40% in the first Trump administration and the subsequent Biden administration.

But in Trump’s second term, some 80% of names the White House has sent to the Senate have been political.

And many of the people Trump has put forward don’t appear to have the credentials usually associated with holding important diplomatic positions. Rather, many are friends, associates or donors to Trump, often with little overseas experience or knowledge of the country they are going to.

Lee Lipton, ambassador to a key ally in the Philippines, is owner of a restaurant in Palm Beach – Florida Benny’s on the Beach – a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and a contributor to his political campaign. The ambassador to Greece is Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Trump adviser and ex-fiancée of his son Donald Jr.

The system of political appointees has always had an element of handing ambassadorships to friends and supporters. But what has changed under Trump is the range of positions now available. In the past, ambassadors to key countries like Chile, Israel, Peru, the Philippines, Turkey and Egypt, for example, have almost always been career appointees. This has changed under the second Trump administration.

Appointing noncareer diplomats to small, faraway nations has the additional problem that the chosen individual may not actually spend much time there. The rule of thumb has long been that ambassadors should spend no more than one month every year back in the United States. But that is compromised if a noncareer diplomat with expansive business ties in the U.S. is selected.

The role of a deputy

A closely related problem is the State Department’s handling of an ambassador’s second in command, their deputy chiefs of missions – DCMs for short – under Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

During Trump’s first term in the White House, politically appointed ambassadors were often encouraged to swap out the DCMs they inherited from their predecessors. It meant going through a long hiring process, leaving those key jobs unfilled for months.

In 2025, the State Department went further, canceling the assignments of senior officers en route to take up embassy jobs and opening a new hiring process.

It formed part of a Trump purge of what many MAGA Republicans characterized as a “deep state” civil service. The reality is that DCMs fill a critically important role in helping political appointees navigate the bureaucracy and implement their policy ideas, as well as raising the occasional reality check.

With more politically appointed ambassadors – some of them with no relevant experience – having an experienced DCM can be the difference between success and failure.

Looking for other friends

When you put all of these personnel changes together, the result is the degradation of what was once seen as one of the most effective diplomatic services in the world.

What makes this potentially more worrying is where the vacancies are. For example, Belarus and Bulgaria, neighbors to Russia and Ukraine, are without U.S. ambassadors. And important countries in the fight against terrorism or in geopolitical hot spots, such as Kuwait, Qatar and Mauritania, are in the same camp.

Other countries still without ambassadors include Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest nation and the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world; key Middle East ally Egypt and nuclear power Pakistan; and nations the U.S. needs to help manage inward migration, such us Haiti and Guatemala.

The problem of absent or inexperienced ambassadors goes both ways. It means Washington may not have a capable diplomatic figurehead in these countries to contact in times of need. There are also fewer avenues for host nations to successfully convey messages back to the U.S. administration.

When faced with absent ambassadors, amateurish political appointees and deputy mission chiefs who are very junior or career appointees with short resumes, host countries may conclude that they aren’t seen as important to the U.S. and start looking elsewhere for friends.

And the U.S. has hollowed out its ambassadorial corps at a time when it is facing growing international influence by the likes of Russia, China and Iran – rival nations hoping to capitalize on a perceived diplomatic void left by Washington.

For example, as the U.S. tries to contain Beijing’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region, Fiji, Indonesia and Laos remain without U.S. ambassadors. Similarly, China’s diplomatic relations with Pakistan – a former key security partner for Washington – have grown while the ambassadorial seat in Islamabad remains empty.

And former Soviet states including Georgia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan don’t have U.S. ambassadors even as Russia President Vladimir Putin attempts to consolidate Moscow’s regional influence.

In large areas of the world, such as Africa and the Pacific region, and in important areas of policy, the lights may be on in U.S. embassies, but nobody’s home. And that is a distinct problem for national security and strategic interests.

Donald Heflin, executive director of the Edward R. Murrow Center and Senior Fellow of Diplomatic Practice, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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GSA still has problems with location data for federal properties, watchdog finds

Christian Robles — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:52:00 -0400

The General Services Administration is still not meeting the Geospatial Data Act of 2018’s requirement to maintain geospatial data, an Office of Inspector General report published Monday found. Previous 2024 and 2022 OIG audits also found that GSA was not fully compliant with the federal law.

GSA has two publicly available geospatial datasets — the Inventory of Owned and Leased Properties Dataset and the Federal Real Property Profile Dataset — that contain inaccurate or missing latitude and longitude coordinates, the OIG found.

The watchdog noted that about 78,624 — or 26% — of properties in the FRPP dataset with coordinates lacked distinct ones and “numerous properties” in that dataset contained erroneous coordinates. The finding echoes a June 2026 Government Accountability Office report that determined about 20% of buildings in the FRPP had coordinates that did not match their reported zip codes.

The OIG found that 634, or about 7%, of the GSA-controlled properties listed in the IOLP-buildings dataset lacked distinct coordinates. Approximately 20% of the IOLP-buildings dataset’s real property assets contained outdated and incorrect congressional representative data.

“GSA should identify cost-effective measures to improve the accuracy and usefulness of the latitude and longitude coordinates in the IOLP and FRPP datasets based on each property’s physical location,” the OIG wrote.

GSA did not maintain its geospatial data inventory for two years until it responded to OIG’s audit, according to the report. The updated inventory showed a roughly 22% increase in geospatial data assets compared to the 2024 inventory.

The OIG found that the agency did not maintain an updated inventory because it does not have a documented process listed in materials like the GEOSPATIAL DATA Standard Operating Procedure — or SOP — and Standards Guide.

“GSA should update its geospatial data SOP to establish a process for maintaining its geospatial data inventory, including defining roles and responsibilities,” the office wrote.

While the Geospatial Data Act requires agencies to search for existing geospatial data before procuring new data, the OIG found that GSA continues to not comply with that requirement.

Following the 2024 audit, GSA agreed to establish a search process, but the agency has not yet implemented it. GSA staff said in April that they were “evaluating resources to determine a timeline for updating the process,” the OIG wrote.

The report said that GSA’s delegation of Geospatial Data Act responsibilities is not effective, leading to some of the recurrent issues. GSA staffing cuts since 2025 have exacerbated those problems, the report added.

GSA did not respond to a request for comment on the OIG report by the time of publication.

GSA Chief Information Officer David Shive did sign a letter agreeing with all five of the OIG’s recommendations for improving geospatial data. The letter says GSA is “working on a plan to address” the recommendations.

Shive agreed to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of feasible corrective action plans for geospatial data accuracy, create a process for correcting IOLP congressional representative name data and establish protocols for GSA-wide compliance with Geospatial Data Act rules.

Shive also agreed to align the GSA’s geospatial strategy plan with a federal 2025-2035 strategic plan and update GSA’s GEOSPATIAL DATA SOP and Standards Guide.

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FBI removes Accenture contractor after missed security patch led to breach

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 16:29:20 -0400

The FBI has severed ties with a contractor working for Accenture amid a massive cybercrime intrusion that may have exposed data on thousands of bureau employees, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Prolific cybercrime group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the hack last month. The data stolen contained employees’ addresses, phone numbers and information on their spouses, among other categories. It also revealed sensitive data on employees’ intelligence and surveillance roles, as well as private medical information.

Accenture is responsible for software patch management and maintaining custom code at the FBI, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the situation is sensitive. Oracle — whose PeopleSoft platform was the initial access point that ShinyHunters claimed to have exploited — provided the security patches that were not integrated, the person added.

FBI cybersecurity chief Brett Leatherman confirmed the removal of an unnamed contractor in a statement to Nextgov/FCW.

“To date, our review has determined that the incident occurred as the result of a security failure of a platform managed by a third-party organization — after a contractor failed to implement a security patch explicitly issued to secure the platform,” Leatherman said. “As such, the FBI has removed the contractor and taken all necessary steps to both mitigate any further risk and protect our workforce.”

The remarks offer the bureau’s clearest explanation yet of how the intrusion occurred, though they do not address why the patch was missed and how the FBI monitored the contractor’s work to ensure systems holding sensitive employee information were protected.

Reuters first reported the removal late Monday. The specific Accenture employee could not be immediately identified.

In a statement, the company said it’s “proud to support the mission of the FBI and will continue to do so.”

The breach follows recent findings from Google’s Mandiant that ShinyHunters had resumed widespread exploitation of a PeopleSoft vulnerability for which Oracle issued a patch in June.

The incident poses serious counterintelligence risks because the exposed records could help foreign intelligence services identify employees working on sensitive investigations and exploit personal information about them.

ShinyHunters has said it would not publish the stolen data, but its statement did not say the records had been deleted. Retired Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, who previously led the Defense Information Systems Agency, told Nextgov/FCW last week that the group could still sell some or all of the information to foreign intelligence services or other buyers.

Authorities have also moved against suspected members of the group. Dutch police last week announced the arrest of an alleged leader, and Reuters reported Saturday that another suspected member, Saif al-Din Khader, had been detained in Jordan and was helping investigators locate other hackers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TSA did not respond to a request for comment.

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

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

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

Erich Wagner contributed to this report

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Appeals court seemingly OKs VA’s contested union contract expiration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Cut first, measure later: Watchdogs find problems across foreign affairs agency reorganizations

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 16:33:28 -0400

While the Trump administration overhauled foreign assistance spending as part of its cost-cutting efforts, a pair of new watchdog reports found that officials have been forced to walk back many of their cuts, including by recalling laid off employees, and have failed to properly track what they modified.

The State Department last year laid off more than 1,000 employees as part of a reorganization at about the same time that it also took over many foreign aid programs after the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Government Accountability Office reported in an analysis published last week that officials were unable to produce data on changes to staffing and grants, leading to questions about the effectiveness of their decisionmaking.

For example, auditors found that State, as of July, cannot account for how many contractors and non-citizen staffers who work at embassies that it employs. GAO said that these groups have historically made up the bulk of the department’s workforce.

“According to State officials, State does not maintain staffing data in a way that allows generating comprehensive data on the composition of its workforce. In the past, State has reported comprehensive data on its workforce, including the number of locally employed and other staff,” auditors wrote. “Without readily available information on the size and composition of its workforce, State cannot be assured that it has the organizational capacity necessary to carry out its mission or to make informed decisions about its operations.”

While State has also canceled about 25% of its foreign assistance grants, contracts and cooperative agreements (nearly 4,300) as of March, totaling roughly $3 billion, GAO reported that there were many inaccuracies in the department’s grants management system. For instance, more than 4,000 awards (out of around 10,000) were categorized as active and terminated.

Additionally, at the start of his second term, President Donald Trump signed a directive pausing foreign assistance for 90 days for a review to ensure that future spending aligned with his priorities. But GAO said that State officials were unable to provide guidance regarding how foreign assistance is assessed under the new criteria.

The watchdog recommended that State correct any inaccuracies in its grant management system, figure out how to develop comprehensive data on its workforce and document standards for assessing the alignment of foreign assistance programs with administration priorities. Officials agreed with all three.

U.S. Agency for Global Media

In March 2025, the president signed an executive order directing several agencies, including the USAGM — which oversees Voice of America, an international broadcaster that provides service in several languages — to eliminate their non-statutory activities and “reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.” But the inspector general for the State Department reported last week that USAGM’s “reduction in operations was done without a detailed analysis of the cost or the impact on the organization’s overall mission.”

USAGM in June 2025 sent reduction in force notices to more than 600 employees, but they had to be reissued two months later because of errors. It’s unclear if those layoffs will take effect because of an ongoing court case, but, as of July, more than 400 employees are on administrative leave at an estimated biweekly cost to the government of $3.2 million.

Additionally, auditors found that officials are recalling staffers on “an ad hoc basis as agency needs were identified rather than based on strategic workforce planning.” For example, VOA Persian-language service employees were brought back after the war in Iran started.

Auditors reported that the agency also:

Canceled IT contracts that prevented it from running 24-hour cybersecurity monitoring and support service. Officials said that they are now reinitiating some of those contracts and hiring additional employees.
Lost the ability to “maintain key accounting processes and controls over accounting transactions or support an audit in a complete and timely manner" due to staff reductions.
Moved to a new location that employees warned would not meet agency requirements. “After taxpayer resources were used to cover the costs of the move, USAGM found that, as reported by internal subject matter experts, the new building did not meet the agency's needs. As a result, USAGM moved again, returning to a building that it previously occupied.”

As happened at other agencies, the IG found that Department of Government Efficiency staffers often disregarded USAGM employee input during the reorganization.

The president tapped Kari Lake, a former journalist and unsuccessful GOP Arizona Senate candidate, to be a senior adviser at USAGM. She’s accused the agency of financial mismanagement and spreading “fake news.”

However Michael Rigas, a senior appointee in the State Department, is the acting CEO of USAGM. And Sarah B. Rogers, the undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, is the nominee for the permanent position.

The IG made several recommendations, including that USAGM determine what its “statutory minimum requirements” are, set measurable agency goals and develop a strategic workforce plan. Rigas concurred with all of the recommendations.

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US spy chief tapped as White House AI czar

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 14:08:13 -0400

President Donald Trump named intelligence director Jay Clayton to serve as the White House AI czar, just two months after being sworn in as the nation’s top spy.

Clayton will head what Trump referred to in a Truth Social post as the “Super Intelligence Force” meant to coordinate the government’s engagement with various organizations, critical infrastructure providers and AI companies. The Trump administration has begun referring to AI as “super intelligence” after the president signed an executive order late last month calling for federal agencies to use the new phrasing.

According to its charter, the task force will create plans to handle AI-enabled threats, streamline breach notifications and improve government response capacities while aiming to avoid overregulation. Its creation follows growing public concerns over AI safety and cybersecurity risks, as well as heated political discussions over data center buildouts that power many of today’s AI systems.

“The risk of not being first is high,” Clayton told the Wall Street Journal in a Saturday exclusive that discussed the task force. “Not being first increases the identified, and unidentified, risks, particularly from our adversaries,” he said. “Being first will better enable us to address those risks on behalf of the American people.”

The task force features three vice chairs: Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson. Its members include Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior advisors, alongside external advisors like venture capitalist David Sacks — who previously worked as Trump’s AI and crypto czar early in the administration — and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It will have 120 days to report on the risks and opportunities of AI and establish a plan for the federal government to tackle it.

The panel’s establishment marks a shift for an administration that has predominantly maintained a hands-off approach toward AI governance. But officials have faced mounting pressure over the past six months to respond as a new generation of sophisticated, autonomous AI models demonstrating advanced cybersecurity capabilities have repeatedly circumvented or escaped established technical safeguards.

Its creation highlights a steady group of voices in the administration and tech industry that believe the time for AI safeguard discussions should begin, though Trump and other officials have largely continued to lean toward a more relaxed approach to regulating the technology.

In public discussions, officials and researchers typically frame AI development as a trade-off between slowing down for safety and accelerating to maintain an edge over foreign adversaries pursuing AI for military and economic gains.

China has especially become a major player in the global AI race. Clayton’s appointment to the task force appears to signal a shift by the administration to cast AI as a geopolitical and national security subject area.

His dual role is a unique move for the White House, placing the current DNI — who oversees all 18 U.S. spy agencies — at the helm of broad domestic technology and economic policy discussions. Clayton brings a background as a corporate lawyer and former SEC chairman, making him a unique pick compared to people with more tech-focused backgrounds that hail from Silicon Valley.

The U.S. intelligence enterprise is poised to benefit from advanced AI adoption. Integrating AI has already transformed how spy agencies digest vast troves of collected data and build intelligence products, among other things.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that he welcomed the administration’s attention toward the fast-evolving technology but said Clayton’s new title lacks a coherent strategy.

“We still do not know what authority this new role will have, whether it will include developing safety standards or reviewing the most advanced models, or how it fits into the administration’s broader approach to AI,” Warner said in a statement. “That lack of clarity is especially concerning as leading AI companies themselves are confronting increasingly capable systems that can evade safeguards and exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities.”

“I hope this appointment is an opportunity for the administration to move beyond slogans and toward a serious, coordinated national strategy for AI,” he added.

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Transportation works to ease fears about its new AI air traffic control tool

Edward Graham — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The Transportation Department’s request to receive an additional $30 billion from Congress to push its massive air traffic control modernization project across the finish line would include new funding to finish overhauling existing IT systems and deploying new artificial intelligence capabilities.

Reactions to the recent rollout of new AI capabilities at Washington, D.C.-region airports, however, have underscored some of the broader national concerns about relying more on advanced technologies, with officials having to go out of their way to ease worries about the tools.

Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration, which is overseeing the ambitious effort to modernize management of U.S. airspace, announced on Sept. 21 that they officially rolled out a new AI-powered tool for Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Dulles International Airport and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport that combines 200 different data streams into one system that can provide better flight traffic management.

FAA said at the time that the Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories — or SMART — tool synthesizes information like flight paths and weather patterns “to provide a comprehensive visualization of where planes are going, how much traffic the system can handle, and where congestion or weather could cause challenges.”

During a Monday press conference announcing the department’s request for $30 billion, Transportation Secretary Duffy cited SMART’s recent deployment and said it is “giving different tools to be predictive in what we not just see at this moment, but what we see in the future, because we want to deliver better for the American people, reduce their delays and reduce their cancelations.”

Duffy added, however, that while new tools like SMART can help enhance air traffic control management, the FAA's continued reliance on outdated systems means that more underlying tech modernization efforts are needed.

“I can operate SMART on that old operating system, but I want a new operating system so I can give new tools to the air traffic controllers,” he said.

Despite Transportation’s excitement about further deployments of the SMART tool, the fact that it is AI-powered has led to some unease from lawmakers and others.

Last month, prior to SMART’s rollout, Politico reported that airline industry officials had been “panicking” about the tool’s integration with other air traffic control systems before the FAA ultimately alleviated their concerns about the new capability.

Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., who represents the congressional district in which Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is situated, expressed similar concerns and released a statement the day the SMART tool was set to be deployed that called for its impending rollout to be suspended, saying that “the FAA should not use my constituents as guinea pigs for an unproven AI air traffic control system.”

In an interview with Nextgov/FCW following SMART’s rollout at the D.C.-area airports, Beyer referenced growing global concerns about the capabilities of more advanced AI models and said his office received feedback expressing similar misgivings about the tool’s deployment.

“If it was just the constituents it would be one thing, but then the air traffic controllers were jumping in saying, ‘Hey, we don't know anything about this. We've not been part of the design. We didn't see anything ahead of time. We found that at the same time you did that it’s going to suddenly be made operational,’” he said.

Beyer said he subsequently spoke with FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford to share his concerns and had “a good conversation” with him about the SMART tool, including how it was created.

In a statement to Nextgov/FCW, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said it “has not been involved in the design, testing or implementation of SMART and therefore cannot speak to its effect on the air traffic control workforce at this time.”

But Beyer said Bedford was reassuring and told him that the tool was designed by air traffic controllers who aren't in the towers right now but are the “30- and 40-year guys who've been doing it all their lives.” He added that Bedford also said SMART is operating at the D.C. region’s Terminal Radar Approach Control facility in Warrenton, Virginia, and not within the towers at Dulles or National airports.

“I think the feedback was you almost need big, busy airports in order to generate enough information to make AI relevant,” Beyer said about SMART first being deployed for the large airports in the Washington, D.C. region, instead of being piloted at smaller airports.

He added that he told Bedford “it would have been good to explain that to the American public,” particularly given the current global discussion around new AI capabilities.

In response to a request for comment, Transportation pointed to a Sept. 22 tweet from Duffy, in which he reposted Beyer’s release expressing concerns about the tool’s deployment and wrote: “Here’s the truth: HUMANS still control the airspace and HUMANS still make the calls. With SMART, we are giving air traffic controllers new technology and better data to make critical decisions.”

In a Fox News clip that was shared with the post, Duffy called SMART “a tool that’s used to better manage traffic” and said air traffic controllers “are the ones who will always manage airspace.”

Recent high-profile incidents where frontier AI models have taken undirected action — including one case in which OpenAI agents escaped from their testing environment and hacked into Hugging Face on their own volition — have exacerbated concerns from tech executives, lawmakers and others about whether guardrails are needed on advanced AI technologies.

President Donald Trump has been vocal about his desire to not overregulate the AI sector to ensure that the U.S. continues to outpace China in development of the technologies.

Duffy has previously drawn a distinction between the frontier models that have raised alarms from some sectors and the AI tools being used to help modernize the nation’s air traffic control systems.

During an event hosted by the National Artificial Intelligence Association in Washington, D.C. last month, Duffy said the air traffic control system upgrades are “going to be driven not by the most complicated AI, but AI that will provide information to [controllers], and will, I think, have a huge impact on the flying public.”

He also stressed that AI capabilities will never replace human air traffic controllers — a sentiment that the National Air Traffic Controllers Association similarly expressed.

“NATCA believes any new technology should complement and not replace the experience, training, and professional judgment of air traffic controllers who are responsible for the safety of the National Airspace System,” the association said.

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State Department appeals board, now with limited authority, gains new members

Jory Heckman — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 17:39:40 -0400

Updated at 6:15 p.m.

The State Department is putting a new slate of individuals in charge of a panel that weighs the appeals of Foreign Service employees challenging firings and other disciplinary measures.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently appointed 14 members to the Foreign Service Grievance Board, keeping the appeals board running with a full roster. The board was half-staffed before these appointments, and the terms for all previous board members expired on Sept. 30.

The board’s former chairman warned Rubio in July that without new appointees, it would “cease to function” in fiscal 2027.

The Foreign Service Grievance Board, created under the 1980 Foreign Service Act, can reverse disciplinary measures and reinstate Foreign Service employees who face termination if the board deems there is insufficient evidence for the State Department to justify those actions.

The Trump administration, however, recently undermined some of the board’s authority to challenge employee removals and other adverse personnel actions.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, in a legal opinion released in August, determined that the board violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution because it had “unreviewable authority" over the secretary of state.

DOJ wrote in a press release that the Foreign Service Grievance Board may continue to hear grievances, but that the secretary of state “will retain final decision-making authority, as the Constitution requires.”

One of the board’s new members, Trenton Douthett, wrote on LinkedIn that the board’s work “matters because the people who serve overseas, often in difficult conditions and far from home, need confidence that disputes about their employment will be resolved fairly, impartially, and on the record.”

The American Foreign Service Association said in a statement that the Trump administration violated the Foreign Service Act by not giving the union an opportunity to approve the nominees.

“Congress required our participation, yet the agencies proceeded without it, rejecting a statutory safeguard designed to protect the board’s independence. Never in the board's history has AFSA been excluded from the process.”

More than a third of the board’s new members are members of the Ben Franklin Fellowship. According to a post on its website, the nonprofit fellowship was created in 2024 to give former Foreign Service employees an opportunity to promote “meritocracy — not DEI and wokeism — in diplomatic service.”

The New York Times recently reported on the fellowship’s influence on the upper echelons of the State Department. House Foreign Affairs Ranking Member Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., wrote in a letter in May that 25 out of 92 total Ben Franklin fellows appear to hold senior roles within the State Department.

Phillip Linderman, chairman of the Ben Franklin Fellowship, said in a statement that the new members of the Foreign Service Grievance Board "bring decades of Foreign Service, State Department, and Federal government experience, including at senior levels, as well as much needed diversity and new perspectives to the FSGB."

"Any suggestion that the new appointees will not fulfill their responsibilities to consider employee grievances in a professional manner because some are affiliated with a conservative foreign policy group is absurd," Linderman said.

Other grievance board members who are not Ben Franklin fellows have supported the rollback of DEI programs on social media. Robin Keller, the board’s new chairwoman, defended the Trump administration’s decision to shutter USAID in a comment to a LinkedIn post last year.

“Please don’t lecture those making efforts to cut the knot on seemingly insoluble problems you wring your hands about and then carry on as usual,” Keller wrote. “Birthright citizenship when abused and other illegal immigration initiatives, the lawless USAID, and so-called diversity initiatives (which don’t enhance diversity) are corrupt and are not supported by the majority. Read the election results."

In a LinkedIn post about the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling overturning affirmative action in higher education admissions, Thomas Moran, another of the board’s new members, commented that the “racial spoil system just took a well deserved hit.”

Members of the Foreign Service Grievance Board serve two-year terms and can be removed by the secretary of state only “for corruption, neglect of duty, malfeasance, or demonstrated incapacity to perform his or her functions."

Amb. Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the State Department’s first chief diversity and inclusion officer, told Government Executive that during her tenure, “there was frequent dissatisfaction” with the board’s decisions – “so much so that our office met with them to better understand how they landed where they did.”

“We learned there was a strict adherence to the law and little room for interpretation,” Abercrombie-Winstanley said. “Many of the puzzling, often upsetting decisions came down to HR or officers not documenting adequately or as instructed.”

“What we’ll see with the new Board (regardless of makeup) is whether they follow the law,” she added. “If they do, there shouldn’t be any major differences in outcomes.”

In April, the State Department recently signed a nearly $1 million contract with the company Military Hire, a subsidiary of the employment firm RedBalloon, which calls itself “America’s non-woke job board.”

Military Hire CEO Andrew Crapuchettes said in an interview that the goal is to recruit 600 to 1,000 candidates to take the Foreign Service Officer Test. The State Department sent layoff notices to nearly 1,350 employees in July 2025. About 200 of them were Foreign Service employees.

This story was updated to include a statement from the chairman of the Ben Franklin Fellowship.

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Housing finance agency chief moves to slash watchdog’s budget, leading Democrats to demand his resignation

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 15:06:58 -0400

Congressional Democratic leaders on Thursday called on Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte to resign after he moved to cut the housing regulator’s watchdog office budget to a level that the inspector general warned would “substantially inhibit” its ability to conduct independent oversight.

On Wednesday, FHFA announced that its IG office would be scaled back after a review found that its budget and staffing were “extraordinary outlier[s]” compared with “peer OIGs.”

“FHFA's decision reflects its responsibility to ensure that every dollar is used responsibly, efficiently and for a clearly documented purpose,” the agency said in a press release. “FHFA fully supports the independence and mission of the Office of Inspector General.”

In a letter sent to lawmakers that same day, however, James Hodge, who is performing the duties of the FHFA IG, argued that the watchdog office’s budget is warranted because of the housing agency’s role as regulator and conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“OIG’s budget determination process directly derives from the unique mission and authorities of FHFA,” he wrote. “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a combined asset total exceeding $7.8 trillion and OIG is the primary law enforcement entity responsible for ensuring that mortgage fraud in this market is investigated and prosecuted.”

The president’s fiscal 2027 budget, which was released in April, proposed $55 million for the FHFA IG. Hodge wrote that he wasn’t informed by the agency that it would be reduced to $20 million until Aug. 31. The new fiscal year began on Thursday.

In response, Hodge said that the agency will need to cut its staffing by up to 80%, close all field offices and “eliminate our capacity to effectively conduct criminal investigation of mortgage, bank and other fraud schemes involving the entities FHFA regulates.”

The IG head reported that the office’s criminal enforcement program has yielded more than 1,270 convictions and nearly $75 billion in monetary results since 2011. The Trump administration has launched several initiatives to combat fraud in federal programs.

FHFA and its OIG are not funded through congressionally approved appropriations; rather, the entities receive money from assessments on entities they regulate.

Senior congressional Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., criticized FHFA’s decision to cut the IG’s funding.

“Pulte’s corrupt crusade to protect himself and President Trump from accountability will likely result in the firing of approximately 40 law enforcement personnel who protect families from mortgage fraud,” they said in a statement. “Bill Pulte should resign, and if he does not, Congress must hold him accountable.”

Likewise, Mark Lee Greenblatt, the former Interior IG who was fired when Trump removed nearly 20 of the watchdogs at the start of his second term, said in a video posted to LinkedIn that: “Everyone should be up in arms about this unilateral move by an agency head which, as far as I know, is unprecedented in the 50-year history of the inspector general community.”

Last year, the president removed the former acting FHFA IG reportedly after he shared information with the prosecutor’s office investigating New York Attorney General Letitia James for mortgage fraud and was planning to notify Congress that the agency was not cooperating with IG investigators.

Pulte issued criminal referrals against several of Trump’s political opponents, including James, Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. And the president has replaced acting IGs at several agencies.

Earlier this year, Pulte had a roughly six-week tenure as acting national intelligence director that was marked by several rounds of staff cuts.

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