Government Executive - Authors - Eric Katz

Someone robbed the SEC during the shutdown

Eric Katz — Wed, 27 May 2026 15:34:08 -0400

When federal agencies closed their doors for a record-setting 43 days last fall, one person saw an opportunity.

An individual is awaiting trial after burglarizing the Securities and Exchange Commission during last year’s government shutdown. The alleged thief did not wait long before entering the SEC regional office in Fort Worth, Texas, as the individual entered the building during the shutdown’s first week.

A contracted security officer was present for the incident, but failed to stop the person, identify them or sign them in, as building protocols require, the SEC’s inspector general said. The burglar “bypassed” a locked door, walked past the security guard and entered the SEC’s office suite. The security guard failed to escort the individual through the building and in the elevators, also in contravention of the building’s security policies.

The person then stole four laptops valued at more than $5,000, a bluetooth earpiece and a rolling briefcase.

Federal employees are generally prohibited from using their government devices during a shutdown if they are placed in non-working furlough status, but are required to report to their offices on the first day of a lapse to ensure their devices are secured. SEC furloughed 88% of its workforce during the most recent funding lapse, though an IG official was not aware of how many employees may have been reporting to the office during the burglary.

The SEC IG worked with local law enforcement to identify the suspect, who is now being held in a Texas corrections center on multiple burglary charges—including the SEC incident—while awaiting trial. While the suspect was arrested, the stolen laptops and other items were not recovered.

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FAA surges medical staff after whistleblower alleges issues with certifying pilots and controllers

Eric Katz — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:17:02 -0400

The Federal Aviation Administration has added 40% more staff to review health certifications of pilots and air traffic controllers after an employee blew the whistle on severe shortfalls that allegedly endangered the public.

The backlog may have led to hundreds of pilots flying who should not have been medically cleared to do so and delayed hiring efforts for new controllers, the whistleblower alleged to the Office of Special Counsel. OSC, which reviews allegations from federal whistleblowers, recommended the FAA employee for a monetary award as a result of his disclosure.

“I thank the whistleblower for coming forward and their steadfast commitment to safeguarding the flying public,” said Charles Baldis, OSC’s chief counsel. “The disclosure prompted meaningful reforms at the FAA, and the whistleblower’s actions reflect the essential role federal employees play in identifying risks and improving the safety of our nation’s aviation system.”

The whistleblower first filed his complaint in 2023 and OSC referred it to the Transportation Department for an investigation the following year. As part of the staffing issues, the whistleblower alleged that 1,200 individuals who were flagged for potential medical issues were flying without further evaluations from FAA and that long waits for the agency’s sign off causes some pilots not to disclose illnesses and injuries. The shortages also risked creating backlogs in hiring air traffic controllers, who, unlike pilots, must clear medical exams conducted by FAA staff before taking their positions.

At the time, the whistleblower said, around one-in-three medical officer roles were vacant at FAA, while their workloads had increased by 250% over the previous seven years.

Transportation ultimately did not substantiate the allegations, finding instead that bottlenecks can occur at several stages of the medical review process and no gross mismanagement or public safety risks occurred. Pilots first go through a screening with a private doctor, and those who are certified to fly then go through an automated, algorithmic review by FAA for any "anomalies." Most of those are resolved before FAA’s medical officers get involved, Transportation found in its report, and it was unlikely that 1,200 pilots were flying aircraft with medical conditions that would put them at risk.

The department concluded that an exceedingly small number of pilots require a lengthy review of their medical certificates and therefore the public is not at risk. It also noted pilots have an affirmative duty to report any medical issues they might have.

Still, FAA has made a concerted effort to bring on more physicians to review medical exams from pilots and air traffic controllers. That initiative got underway in the Biden administration, but carried forward after President Trump took office. The medical officer staff were exempt from workforce reduction efforts and the federal hiring freeze, and has grown by nearly 40% since September 2024. The agency has also sought to better educate potential pilots on the information and documents required of them and contracted out some of the administrative work required for ATC approvals.

OSC disputed Transportation’s decision declining to substantiate the allegations, noting FAA struggled to meet its mandated 60-day window to complete reviews of medical certifications. It also found FAA has for several years been on a controller hiring spree, while the medical staff remained stagnant. In 2023 it took 133 days for a controller to receive medical clearance and controllers cannot begin working or training without such clearance.

“OSC does not find the agency’s conclusions regarding the lack of safety risks appear reasonable, but we appreciate that the agency prioritized corrective actions to greatly increase staffing and efficiency in AAM to nonetheless resolve these concerns,” Baldis said.

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The White House is ordering agencies to place its new app on all employees’ government phones

Eric Katz and Natalie Alms — Fri, 22 May 2026 17:08:23 -0400

Updated May 22 at 8:57 p.m.

The White House recently unveiled a new app to give the public “unfiltered” access to “key priorities,” “historic moments” and “policy breakthroughs.” Now, it’s directing agencies to help install it on the government phones of federal employees.

The Trump administration launched the app, which promises to “[keep] you connected to President Donald J. Trump and his administration like never before,” in March.

The push to install the app on the devices of millions of government employees drew surprise from current and former federal officials, who called the move highly unusual and even dangerous.

The White House launched its new app in March 2026.

In at least one agency, the automatic downloads will start next week in a move directed by the White House itself, according to internal communications obtained by Government Executive. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this week, agency chief information officers got orders from the federal CIO, Greg Barbaccia, to help the White House understand the mechanics of installing the app across all government-furnished mobile phones in the executive branch, according to an internal email obtained by Government Executive.

“The White House App gives all Americans direct access to White House live streams, breaking news alerts, new policy initiatives, social media posts, and more,” said Olivia Wales, a White House spokesperson. “Government devices typically include pre-installed apps that provide value to government employees’ day-to-day work.”

The move is “dangerous,” Sonny Hashmi, a former longtime government IT executive, told Government Executive.

Cybersecurity researchers warned about vulnerabilities in the app soon after it debuted, like how it shares the IP addresses, time zones and other data of users with third-party services. The app also raised initial concerns about its potential GPS tracking capability, but the White House has since removed that functionality.

Forcing agencies to install it on employee’s government furnished phones should be “cause for alarm,” said Hashmi, who worked at the General Services Administration for years, most recently as a Biden administration appointee. “Any app that is installed on government issued devices can potentially create backdoor access to government networks behind the firewall.”

The Federal Aviation Administration told employees on Friday that its IT team “will automatically install ‘The White House’ application on all FAA-issued iPhones and iPads, as mandated by the White House,” adding the process would occur automatically and employees “do not need to take any action.”

“The application will grant access to breaking news, policy updates, livestreams, videos, photos, social media content, and exclusive early-access information,” it said.

The app includes official statements and policy announcements from the administration, as well as a feed of social media posts from White House accounts and the president.

A button gives the option to “text President Trump,” which, when clicked, opens a text message to a pre-selected number with the default text “Greatest President Ever!” Sending the text signs the user up for alerts, which individuals can also do through the app itself.

While the instructions to install the administration’s app on government phones may sound like a way to simply communicate with the government workforce more directly, “this isn’t really operational,” former government tech official David Nesting told Government Executive, pointing to the fact that it’s the same app available to the general public.

“It's just making sure all federal employees are forced to see the same propaganda they push out to the public,” said Nesting, who previously worked in career, civil service government roles as the deputy CIO at OPM and also did stints at the federal Office of the Chief Information Officer and U.S. Digital Service before it was DOGE.

The app includes videos and messaging that are overtly political or directly related to campaigns, the type of material with which employees are typically discouraged from engaging while on the clock due to the non-partisan nature of their work.

Barbaccia’s email to government IT executives suggests that how to force the app to install across phones wasn’t immediately apparent to the White House, as it requested help with the “mechanics” of pushing the app out across government phones.

This marks at least the second time the administration has sought to make it easier to communicate with the entire federal workforce all at once.

In the days after Trump moved back into the White House last year, the Office of Personnel Management set up a new, first of its kind governmentwide email system – something that didn’t previously exist. It later used the new system to send out the administration’s “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation offer to get hundreds of thousands of federal employees to resign from their roles.

This story has been updated with comment from the White House.

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TSA workforce, aviation leaders challenge Trump push to expand privatized airport screening

Eric Katz — Wed, 20 May 2026 16:04:00 -0400

Updated May 21 at 5 p.m.

Industry and government employee representatives alike pushed back on President Trump’s attempt to mandate the privatization of screening efforts at small airports on Wednesday, suggesting during congressional testimony the program should remain optional and could lead to worse outcomes.

The airline industry, the head of a major airport and the top official representing Transportation Security Administration employees all threw cold water on the president’s plan, which the White House proposed earlier this year. Trump is looking to dramatically scale up the Screening Partnership Program to include hundreds of participants, compared to the current roster of just more than 20 airports.

Former Gov. Chris Sununu, R-N.H., now the president of Airlines for America, said his members do not want to see airports have their choices taken away. The overwhelming majority of airports in the United States have since the Sept. 11 attacks used federal TSA screeners at their checkpoints, though the law creating the agency allowed them to opt in a partnership with the private sector.

“Ensuring SPP remains an option for airports and does not become a mandatory program is paramount to the U.S. aviation industry,” Sununu said, adding that while some of the airports that have elected to participate in the privatization program have done so successfully, “airports need the flexibility to make their own choices.”

Chris McLaughlin, CEO of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, said TSA staff at his facility “do an amazing job” and he is therefore uninterested in joining the program.

“I think it's important for airports to have choices,” McLaughlin said. “I think there might be places where an SPP model could work for specific airports.”

Trump’s privatization plan would lead to job cuts of around 4,500 TSA employees. He proposed eliminating another nearly 5,000 jobs by reallocating resources that the agency said will lead to more efficiency, as well as by tasking states and localities to staff exit lanes. The budget proposed an additional $477 million for SPP to get more airports to enroll, though the White House said it would ultimately save $52 million.

“The budget begins the privatization of TSA’s airport screeners by requiring small airports to enroll in the Screening Partnership Program, under which TSA pays for private screeners at designated airports,” the White House said. “The airports that already use this program have demonstrated savings compared to federal screening operations.”

The president has also launched TSA Gold Plus, which would enable airports to leverage private sector investment in providing technology and staffing for screening while maintaining federal oversight. That differs from SPP, which uses federal dollars to contract with private screeners.

The administration has pointed to the two extended government shutdowns in fiscal 2026 that have forced TSA employees to go months on only the promise of back pay to justify the privatization push, suggesting non-government personnel maintained their pay throughout the funding lapses.

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA workers, said the pre-9/11 era demonstrated the pitfalls of privatized airport screening.

“The consequences of reverting to a contractor-driven model are not theoretical,” Kelley said. “We lived them before September 2001 and the historical record is unambiguous.”

Most Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee that held Wednesday's hearing said forced privatization would be a mistake that would lead to worse outcomes for both travelers and TSA personnel. Workers at private companies would earn less than most TSA staff, they said, while losing their collective bargaining rights—a shift the administration is already seeking to implement at the agency.

“Airports recognize the downsides of privatization over the last 25 years,” said Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif. “Airports have had the option to join SPP at any time, and only a small handful have done so.”

Republicans, meanwhile, expressed an openness to the plan, noting Democratically controlled cities have either implemented SPP (San Francisco) or are considering doing so (Seattle and Atlanta).

“I applaud the administration’s establishment of a new TSA Modernization office, reporting directly to the TSA administrator,” said Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., who chaired the hearing..” This new office directly answers this committee’s calls to modernize and reform the agency while increasing public-private partnerships in striving toward greater security outcomes.”

After the hearing, Garbarino clarified that private-public partnerships should be just one part of TSA's modernization, which should include new technology and streamlined screening for certain populations. He has supported bipartisan legislation to allow TSA to retain all of the fees it collects from travelers and to allow families with young children to receive expedited screenings.

"When it comes to optional programs like SPP, the most important thing stressed at this week’s hearing is that this is one of many avenues available to airports as they determine what frameworks work best for their needs," Garbarino said. "That was an important conversation to have across party lines, and I appreciated the testimony from all of our witnesses on how we can work together to protect the traveling public and our dedicated TSA workforce.”

Kelley suggested TSA employees should be applauded for their efforts while seeing their paychecks delayed, collective bargaining rights stripped and threats of thousands of job cuts.

“Despite all of this, they have continued to show up,” Kelley said. “They have continued to screen nearly three million passengers a day. They have maintained their unblemished record of keeping the flying public safe from terrorist violence.”

This story has been updated with additional comment.

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Nuclear waste oversight at risk as staffing vacancies mount, watchdog warns

Eric Katz — Tue, 19 May 2026 18:27:25 -0400

Updated May 20 at 9:10 a.m.

Nearly half of the positions in the federal government’s office responsible for handling and cleaning up nuclear waste are currently vacant, according to a new audit, after the Trump administration incentivized a wave of departures at the agency.

The Energy Department’s Environmental Management office lost around one-third of its employees in fiscal 2025, the Government Accountability Office found in a new report, most of whom left as part of the “deferred resignation program” that allowed employees to sit on paid leave for several months before exiting government. It already maintained a vacancy rate of 20% in 2023, GAO said. About half of the nuclear waste office’s unfilled positions were in mission-critical roles.

In a separate report in 2024, GAO found Environmental Management faced challenges in cleaning up nuclear waste due to understaffing, as it forced schedule delays, cost overruns and workplace accidents. At its 15 clean up sites, the Energy office is tasked with deactivating contaminated buildings, remediating contaminated soil and operating facilities that treat millions of gallons of liquid radioactive waste.

At its location in the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the office has a vacancy rate of 62%. The rate was among the lowest of any EM facility at its headquarters, where it was still 39%. Over the last 10 years, the office’s low point in staffing was in 2024 at 1,279, or more than 30% than its current level.

Each of EM’s six mission-critical occupation groups experienced a decrease, including nuclear engineering, general engineering and general physical science. Positions for facilities representatives, who provide the office’s “on-site presence for safety and compliance purposes” including worker health, are 44% vacant. All of the positions at the Carlsbad Field Office are vacant, while Los Alamos has just one remaining.

“This understaffing includes shortages in mission-critical occupations that are integral to carrying out EM’s mission, which includes addressing contaminated buildings, soil, and groundwater, and treating radioactive waste,” GAO said.

Energy officials told GAO the nuclear clean up office is currently reorganizing and reassessing its staffing needs. It is planning to hire 174 workers in fiscal 2026, they said, and it is not planning any changes to its responsibilities. Such hiring would still leave the office with 19% fewer employees than it had when President Trump took office last year, as well as with a 33% vacancy rate in the office according to its own previously assessed needs.

The officials suggested EM may eliminate some vacant positions and that could reduce the vacancy rate, GAO said. Some of the planned hiring, however, will come from transfers within Energy, potentially creating more vacancies elsewhere. The officials added that it will take at least a year to train many of the new hires.

"The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management remains fully equipped with the expertise necessary to carry out mission-critical projects, including with regards to addressing contaminated buildings, soil, and groundwater, and treating radioactive waste,” a spokesperson said. “Thanks to President Trump, the Energy Department’s Environmental Management Office is advancing common sense solutions that protect public health and safety, fulfill cleanup responsibilities, and deliver greater value for the American taxpayer.”

Employees within the office told GAO the vacancies are taking a toll.

“According to EM officials, leaving these positions vacant means there are fewer people to manage the workload, resulting in employees potentially burning out with heavy workloads, which gives them concern over the safety of operations,” GAO said.

The officials added that the office “was not hiring any entry-level people and was losing knowledge at a rapid rate as employees continue to retire and resign.”

This story has been updated with comment from the Energy Department.

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EEOC says government must pay damages to some employees subject to Biden's vaccine mandate

Eric Katz — Mon, 18 May 2026 15:08:22 -0400

The Biden administration unlawfully discriminated against some Interior Department employees who were denied religious exemptions to the now-defunct COVID-19 vaccine mandate, an oversight body ruled on Monday, saying the workers will be entitled to monetary compensation.

The administration’s denial of three Bureau of Indian Education employees seeking religious accommodations to get out of the mandate then-President Biden put in place for federal workers in 2021 violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said in its ruling. Interior said at the time accommodating the employees would cause undue hardship on the agency and create unsafe working conditions for their colleagues, but EEOC ruled the agency failed to prove those claims.

“No one is above the law, especially the federal government entrusted to enforce it,” said said EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, adding Monday’s decision “is a step toward justice for federal employees who suffered under the pandemic-era policies of the Biden Administration.”

Biden issued the mandate to some controversy, particularly as it allowed for agencies to discipline or fire workers who failed to comply with it. The order was eventually paused by various legal challenges and later revoked altogether, but not before 93% of the workforce got vaccinated and another 5% successfully sought a religious or medical exemption.

The Biden administration ultimately disciplined few employees for failing to comply with its mandate. Some agencies accepted anyone’s request for a religious accommodation without seeking further follow ups, though Interior, EEOC found, took a more nuanced approach.

After giving the employees a temporary pass on the mandate, religious exemption seekers went before a panel of Interior officials who sought to affirm the employees’ religious sincerity. It found the use of fetal cell lines in the initial development of the vaccine conflicted with certain employees’ religious beliefs, but said accommodating them would create intolerable risk and cost the agency up to $10,000 per unvaccinated employee per year to provide adequate masks and tests.

The employees who brought their case to EEOC still declined to get the vaccine, though they never faced any resulting disciplinary action. In its internal review of their complaint, Interior determined the employees were not entitled to any relief because they never faced any consequences. EEOC disagreed, arguing they suffered "redressable injuries" that were not alleviated by the "fortuitous intervention" but various federal courts.

The commission also noted it had to consider the case under a new precedent. The 2023 Supreme Court case Groff v. DeJoy affirmed that federal agencies — and all employers — must allow staff to practice their religion to the greatest extent possible unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on business operations. In this case, EEOC said, Interior should have implemented an alternative that allowed it to keep employees safe while still accommodating staff with religious objections to the vaccine.

“Testing and masking ostensibly effect similar safety goals as vaccination,” EEOC said.

It added the department’s complaint of the cost of masks and tests were unfounded as Congress authorized funding for explicitly that purpose.

EEOC instructed Interior to take the next four months to conduct a new review and determine what damages the impacted employees are owed, and to make those payments within the subsequent two months. The department must also train relevant management officials on the Civil Rights Act and create a new process for granting religious accommodations.

“The government clearly fell short of its obligation under the law,” said Lucas, who Trump first appointed as a commissioner in 2020 and made chair in 2025. “Under my leadership, the EEOC is committed to pursuing accountability, ensuring compliance, and securing justice for all workers, in both the private and public sector.”

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HHS to start Schedule P/C conversions while withholding details on new RIFs

Eric Katz and Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 18 May 2026 14:35:18 -0400

The Health and Human Services Department has started the process of converting some of its employees to Schedule Policy/Career, a new job classification with weaker protections that many civil servants and good government experts fear is an attempt to replace career staff with political appointees.

HHS on Friday afternoon sent an email to supervisors that the initial conversions are “expected to apply to a relatively modest number of GS-15 positions — on the order of hundreds, not thousands — with additional tranches to follow as implementation progresses.”

Officials have estimated that around 50,000 agency staffers governmentwide will be targeted for conversion. Employees designated for the new schedule will no longer have the same notice and appeal rights regarding adverse actions, such as firings and suspensions, as the vast majority of the civil service enjoys.

“Conversion to Schedule P/C is based on the nature of a position, not the performance or conduct of an individual,” according to the email obtained by Government Executive. “These actions are administrative in nature and are not intended to be punitive or to signal concerns about an employee’s work.”

Schedule P/C is a revived iteration of Schedule F, an unsuccessful effort from President Donald Trump’s first term to remove most civil service job protections for federal employees in “policy-related” positions, making them at-will workers who can be fired for virtually any reason.

An HHS official told Government Executive that the reclassifications to Schedule P/C will only take effect after Trump issues an executive order.

“This will strengthen accountability for positions with significant policy-influencing responsibilities and applies to a relatively modest number of positions,” the official said in a statement.

The Schedule P/C email at HHS was first reported by Reuters.

Agencies across government had to turn over by April 2025 their recommendations for which staff would fall under the new classification. Some agencies began notifying impacted workers they would be converted to at-will status last year, but the administration walked those back as the notices were deemed premature.

The Office of Personnel Management cemented Schedule P/C regulations with a final rule in November, and all agencies are expected to begin notifying impacted staff of their conversions under that policy following Trump’s forthcoming executive order.

As the Trump administration has sought to downsize the civil service, the Partnership for Public Service nonprofit recently reported that the number of career employees in the Senior Executive Service has decreased by nearly 30% since 2025. Conversely, the federal political appointee workforce is at its largest size in decades.

Layoffs

Also on Friday, employees from agencies across HHS reported there was another round of reductions in force. But they were uncertain about the scale and why impacted workers had been targeted.

Over the weekend, an organization of former and current National Institutes of Health employees put out a video saying that the layoffs seemed to affect staffers who had initially expressed an interest in one of the administration’s retirement incentives and, therefore, were exempt from last year’s layoffs.

“Often these people were the only person in their entire department that wasn’t RIF’d last April,” said Jenna Norton — an NIH employee, speaking in her personal capacity — in the video. “They’ve sort of been hanging out, waiting, knowing this was coming for months. And Friday, it finally happened.”

Similarly, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an employee familiar with the matter told Government Executive that the newly laid off staffers were a part of teams that had been entirely eliminated during the 2025 layoffs, but they were spared for unclear reasons and, unlike at NIH, had not indicated any interest in a separation incentive. The CDC employee said that supervisors assumed the retention of these workers was an oversight and did not ask questions, hoping to avoid what eventually transpired on Friday.

Affected workers at CDC are slated to be off boarded in 90 days.

In several instances over the last year, HHS has unwound small patches of the roughly 10,000 layoffs it implemented last April. The department shed roughly one-quarter of its workforce last year, or around 20,000 employees, through the layoffs and various separation incentives. Now, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pledging to hire 12,000 new staff to fill gaps in the department.

HHS did not respond to a question about the recent RIFs.

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'Going to be a s***show': Parks, Interior struggle to hire temporary staff ahead of busy season

Eric Katz — Thu, 14 May 2026 13:01:50 -0400

The Interior Department is struggling to keep up with even the diminished pace of hiring for its busy season it experienced last year, according to several officials and internal documents, raising concerns about its capacity to handle the upcoming surge in both park visitors and wildfires.

Interior had around 4,200 seasonal employees on board as of early April, according to internal figures obtained by Government Executive, a 1% decrease from the same period in 2025 and down around 14% from the same period in 2024. As of late March, Interior was tracking 7% behind its 2025 seasonal hiring figures.

The department brings on temporary staff each year to handle the surge of tourists who visit National Parks, as well as federal monuments, historical sites, wildlife refuges and other federal lands, as well as to support the response to wildfire season. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said last year the National Park Service alone would hire 7,700 seasonal staff—in part to offset dramatic decreases in the agency’s permanent workforce—but internal data show the agency peaked at around 5,150 temporary workers, or 33% short of its target.

Interior has shed around 11,000 permanent employees, or 17% of its workforce, since January 2025, while NPS has reduced its rolls by around 4,000 workers, or 22%. It last month offered another incentive for a large swath of its workforce to leave the department.

While seasonal hiring typically ramps up significantly in May and June, the department has already fallen behind last year’s pace and employees say it no longer has the infrastructure to execute widespread onboarding as quickly as it typically does. Interior has lost around 18% of its human resources staff, which several current and former employees said has diminished its capacity to move seasonal hires through the system. The department lost more than 100 additional HR personnel during last month’s “deferred resignation” offer, according to multiple employees.

“We don’t have the staff to hire, do backgrounds or even onboard,” one Interior HR official said.

Internal messages from Interior’s central HR office, obtained by Government Executive, made clear the capacity issues. One such email told staff to expect delays for any hire submitted less than two full pay periods before the requested start date due to processing difficulties, including with security clearances. Some hires with offers in hand are having their onboardings pushed into June, a slower turnaround than the seasonal staff typically experience.

“Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work through these backlogs,” the email read.

Another message implored staff to stop seeking updates on hired individuals as it was further slowing down the process.

“We understand that parks are eager to onboard their seasonal staff and recognize the importance of getting teams in place quickly,” the email read. “Please know that both the personnel security team and our processing team are committed to supporting this effort and are working as quickly as possible to facilitate the onboarding process.”

Multiple employees also said recruiting has dried up due to a more negative perception of working for the department and the government in general. They cited the staff reduction efforts—particularly those focused on new hires at the beginning of President Trump’s second term—budget cuts and a snafu in paying seasonal staff during last year’s shutdown as a deterrent to potential applicants.

“We are also struggling to fill the funded seasonal vacancies we do have,” an HR staffer said. “People just don’t want to work for the government after seeing everything that happened last year.”

The first official noted the new questions on most federal job applications asking potential hires to opine on their preferred Trump administration policies has also discouraged individuals from seeking the jobs.

“The political questions gross out a lot of applicants, so we aren’t even getting many,” the official said.

Despite the setbacks, Burgum told the House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday that Interior was on schedule for its seasonal hire. He added NPS had hired “thousands and thousands” of employees and that figure would grow if Congress reauthorizes the Great American Outdoors Act Trump originally signed into law in 2020.

“We’re staffing up,” Burgum said. “And hiring is going really well this year across parks and across wildland fire.”

Interior employees took issue with that characterization, with one official simply responding “LOL.” The employees noted they expect a particularly busy summer this year as the nation celebrates its 250th birthday.

“It’s going to be a s***show,” one of the HR officials said.

In a statement, an Interior spokesperson focused only on wildland firefighting personnel and said it would meet the same level of hires — around 5,700 — this year as it brought on in 2025. It also castigated its employees for leaking information to the press instead of focusing on their other responsibilities.

"At a time when communities are preparing for wildfire season, the priority should be operational readiness and mission execution, not anonymous political sniping," the spokesperson said. "Americans expect wildland fire personnel to be focused on readiness and response, not internal political distractions."

Other employees noted the significant reductions in permanent staff have made it nearly impossible for even a robust seasonal hiring spree to fill the gaps. An employee based in a National Park in the Intermountain Region said his park is down to one permanent custodian, has no rangers to oversee trails and roads, various chief positions are vacant and half of maintenance roles are unfilled.

“[We are] quite literally fucked,” the employee said. “We were unable to hire as many seasonals as there were positions.”

Interior has shifted thousands of employees working in functions like IT, contracting and HR away from individual bureaus like NPS to instead consolidate them within Burgum’s office. It is also moving firefighters out of the bureaus and into a newly stood up U.S. Wildland Fire Service. That new agency is gearing up for peak fire season in the coming months, though a reduction in the number of seasonal hires could lead to a diminished cadre of staff with “red cards.” Those employees hold certifications for firefighting duties and deploy as needed to wildfires.

Jayson O’Neill, a spokesperson for Save Our Parks, said seasonal staff who typically help visitors staying at campground check in and assist people looking to hike backcountry areas get permits are not present to fulfill those duties. He added that rangers are being deployed to collect entrance fees, filling what would normally be a seasonal job.

“That means that ranger is not out there when they are needed,” O’Neill said. “Rangers aren’t able to protect people because they’re not there.”

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DOT inspector general reviewing complaint against Sean Duffy over reality show

Eric Katz — Tue, 12 May 2026 17:17:04 -0400

A new reality show may have forced its star, Transportation Department Secretary Sean Duffy, to flout federal gift and travel rules, according to a complaint lodged by an ethics watchdog group this week.

Transportation’s inspector general should probe the cost of Duffy’s forthcoming YouTube show, The Great American Road Trip, to U.S. taxpayers, who approved the ethics arrangements, whether any sponsorship deals violate those arrangements and whether the secretary improperly accepted any gifts, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said in a letter to the IG on Monday.

Duffy announced the production last week, saying he had filmed it with his family in bits and pieces over the course of seven months. A trailer showed Duffy, his wife and his nine children traveling to various parks, landmarks and historical sites around the country.

The show was not publicly funded and is produced entirely by The Great American Road Trip, Inc., but it has raised ethical concerns from observers who noted companies that Transportation regulates, such as Toyota, United Airlines, Enterprise, Royal Caribbean Group and Boeing, are major backers of that organization.

A presentation made public by Politico on Tuesday unveiled that The Great American Road Trip offered sponsorships to interested parties ranging from $100,000 for bronze-level packages to $1 million for platinum-level. While the show was produced by the outside group, the trailer was posted to Transportation’s official YouTube page and Duffy presented himself in his official capacity.

Federal officials are prohibited from accepting gifts from anyone who might have business before their agency, CREW noted, while travel regulations prohibit them from using government funds for any personal trips. CREW questioned whether Duffy received an ethics sign off for the show, he is personally benefiting from his official position, government funds were used to pay for other Transportation staff related to the show and other potential regulatory or statutory violations.

Ada Valaitis, a spokesperson for Transportation's inspector general, confirmed the office received the complaint and is currently reviewing it.

In a post on X, Duffy dismissed any concerns about his show, saying it was coming from the “radical, miserable left” who found the production “too wholesome,” “too patriotic” and “too joyful.” He said no taxpayer dollars were spent on the show or his family, that he and his family received no salary or royalties, it was filmed in one-to-two day production windows and that career ethics and budget officials reviewed and approved of his participation and travel.

Nathaniel Sizemore, a Transportation spokesperson, added The Great American Road Trip, Inc. paid for things like gas, car rentals, lodging and activities. Because he was also conducting official business on his trips for the show, the department paid for the secretary’s flights.

“Celebrating America’s 250th Anniversary is part of Secretary’s Duffy official duties and The Great American Road Trip is one aspect in support of those responsibilities,” Sizemore said. “On these brief stops, the secretary also often conducted additional visits like touring air traffic control towers and assessing port infrastructure.”

He added the department had no involvement in any sponsorship deals and such deals would have no impact on its regulatory decisions.

“The Great American Road Trip Inc is an independent organization,” Sizemore said. “How and who they accept donations from in furtherance of their mission to celebrate America’s 250th birthday is their decision.”

Donald Sherman, CREW’s president, said the department’s explanation was insufficient.

“The department has claimed that taxpayer funds were not used to pay for the trip, but Secretary Duffy has used government resources to promote the project,” Sherman said. “In addition, accepting travel from companies with business before DOT potentially implicates even more significant corruption and misconduct concerns.”

He added that “public trust requires” the inspector general to conduct an investigation, as it would “ensure integrity in the use of official resources and protection of public funds.”

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The number of feds in tax debt spiked during the pandemic

Eric Katz — Mon, 11 May 2026 17:03:01 -0400

The rate of federal employees who fail to pay their taxes on time has grown in recent years, according to a new audit, though the Internal Revenue Service is hopeful it can soon shrink the figure.

The federal workforce still overwhelmingly pays its taxes on time, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found in a new report, though the delinquency rate has grown from 4.9% in 2021 to 6.9% in 2024. There were 215,000 federal workers who had outstanding tax bills as of 2024, a 45% jump from 2021. They collectively owed $2.1 billion, up from $1.5 billion three years prior.

IRS officials attributed much of the increase to a pause of various collection efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The IRS began a phased-in resumption of the levy program in August 2024 and anticipates that the delinquency rates will decrease in the coming years,” the inspector general said.

Still, the auditors implored IRS to do a better job ensuring federal employees pay their taxes on time. IRS is prohibited from sharing its list of non-compliant feds with other agencies, a ban the IG suggested the Treasury Department lobby Congress to change.

“If taxpayers (i.e., non-federal employees) are aware that federal employees are not timely satisfying their tax obligations, it may impact their willingness to comply with their own tax matters,” the IG said.

The watchdog noted that Treasury has an obligation to hold employees accountable for tax noncompliance and its rate for such workers is just 2.4%.

IRS and Treasury last year collaborated to mail 427,000 notices to federal employees and retirees delinquent on their taxes, which led to nearly 65,000 of those individuals making at least some payment on their tax bills. Agency officials said that was a one-time initiative and it would not be sending additional notices.

The tax agency in 1993 launched a program to specifically track and identify federal workers who fall behind on their tax bills. The number of employees working on that program dropped in half last year as part of IRS’ overall effort to shrink its workforce. Still, the agency said it has introduced additional enforcement of delinquent federal workers and is now prioritizing that population in its collection activity two days per week instead of one day per quarter.

As of 2024, there were 572,000 combined federal employees retirees who were not up to date on their taxes. That figure jumped by 43% since 2021 despite the overall population slightly declining. They owe $6.3 billion in taxes, a 32% increase.

About 50,000 current employees failed to file a tax return for multiple years. More than 1,000 employees are delinquent on their taxes for at least six years. The IG said it referred the 122 federal workers who were at least eight years behind to IRS’ Criminal Investigations division.

Federal employee advocates have noted over the years that the civil servants maintain a delinquency rate far lower than that of the U.S. population.

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FEMA should employ fewer staff and offer aid to fewer individuals, Trump’s council recommends

Eric Katz — Thu, 07 May 2026 17:35:28 -0400

The federal government would employ less staff to respond to disasters and offer fewer opportunities for assistance to those impacted by them under a new set of recommendations put forward on Thursday by a panel created by President Trump, which said state and local governments must assume a larger share of responsibilities after major storms and other emergencies.

The much anticipated review of the Federal Emergency Management Agency called for a smaller footprint of the organization after a staffing assessment and a multi-year effort to shrink the workforce. FEMA’s workload has ballooned well beyond its initial mission, the panel said, which has resulted in an overly bureaucratic system that discourages states, individuals and the private sector from taking on important tasks.

Members of the FEMA Review Council—led by Homeland Security Department Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Defense Department Secretary Pete Hegseth and assortment of 10 current and former elected leaders and emergency management officials—said at a meeting unveiling their final report on Thursday that their “north star” was shifting leadership of emergency response and recovery to state, local, tribal and territorial governments. Their recommendations will now go to President Trump—who created the council by executive order on his first week in office—for his review, though many of the most significant proposals would require legislative action.

The council’s other goals included making FEMA a leaner organization, emphasizing the role of the individual, accelerating federal assistance dollars and maximizing transparency of public dollars spent on emergency management.

State and local governments should not be relying on federal spending to sustain their programs, said Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management and a lead on the FEMA panel. States should only hire firefighters they can pay themselves after initial federal assistance, Guthrie said as an example, and they should partner with faith and nonprofit groups for initial debris removal.

“Federal assistance should only be reserved for truly significant events that exceed state, local, tribal and territorial capacity and capability,” Guthrie said.

The council proposed a radical overhaul of FEMA’s assistance to individuals after disasters. Survivors can currently qualify for any of 15 different categories of individual assistance after an emergency, including for child care, medical expenses or a funeral. Under the new proposal, FEMA would offer only assistance to those whose houses were completely destroyed. The new approach would create a more streamlined interaction for survivors, who council members said have often complained of overly burdensome and confusing paperwork. They would still be able to use the funds for other costs, such as medical expenses or funerals.

Under the Trump administration, many governments and advocacy groups have complained of slowed down dispersal of funds after a disaster due to added layers of review and staffing losses.

Madison Sloan, director of disaster recovery and fair housing for the nonprofit Texas Appleseed, told reporters after the council released its recommendations that disaster survivors "absolutely" want a more streamlined system, but said the proposals would "slash the help" that is available to them.

“If your major disaster need is medical or funeral expenses, or you lost the car, you need to get to work, there's no help for you if your home wasn't destroyed,” Sloan said.

The panel suggested FEMA raise the threshold for when disaster declarations are made, saying it has become artificially low and does not appreciate the capacity state and local governments maintain.

It also recommended an overhaul of how FEMA doles out money for rebuilding and disaster avoidance, saying those mitigation dollars are disbursed too slowly in the current system. Under a new framework, states would be able to quickly tap into a percentage of estimated disaster costs in two tranches. In addition, the public assistance program, which funds projects such as replacing damaged infrastructure, would shift from a reimbursement model to a block grant model. The existing system is “reactive” and “excruciatingly slow,” whereas the new structure would transfer funds to states within 30 days of a presidential disaster declaration.

The council was initially set to release its report last year but the plan was put on ice after intervention from then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. It reportedly included widespread cuts to FEMA’s workforce. The updated document did not call for any specific staffing level, though it did propose reductions. FEMA recently reversed course on some personnel cuts after it brought back hundreds of emergency responders whose contracts it previously declined to review.

The report would task FEMA with conducting a “strategic review of personnel requirements to determine appropriate staffing levels, primarily targeting the disaster workforce through program efficiencies and increased accountability.” The resulting “workforce adjustments” would take place over two-to-three years to allow the agency “to realize the efficiencies while reducing staff.”

FEMA would, under the proposal, also consider relocating its headquarters out of Washington and offloading some of its work to the Defense Department.

Will McDow, the Environmental Defense Fund's associate vice president for coasts and watersheds, said the council's findings failed to reflect the increasingly frequent and severe storms across the country.

“Slashing investments and functions of FEMA would shift enormous burdens onto states and communities and reduce government efficiency,” McDow said. “Instead of one centralized agency that can respond for all states, we would need 50.”

Sloan similarly suggested the proposals would leave gaps in the nation’s emergency response.

“There is a major shift of responsibility and costs to state, local, tribal and territorial governments, with no guarantee that there will be sufficient federal funding to meet those costs, or that states will be able to raise that money themselves,” she said.

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More than 3-in-4 allegations of sexual assault against federal prison staff are going unresolved

Eric Katz — Wed, 06 May 2026 13:41:57 -0400

Allegations of sexual abuse against staff at federal prisons are overwhelmingly left unresolved after the Bureau of Prisons is unable to draw a conclusion on whether such incidents occurred, according to a new report that found the federal Bureau of Prisons is frequently ill-equipped to handle those investigations.

Allegations of rape and sexual misconduct against federal corrections officers by inmates have spiked in recent years, the Government Accountability Office found in its review of enforcement of the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), and the bureau is in many ways failing to implement the law in the way Congress intended.

From 2014 through 2022, federal inmates logged nearly 4,000 complaints of sexual abuse against prison staff. Just 9% of those were substantiated by BOP, though 77% saw investigations end inconclusively. The agency proved the incidents did not occur in just six cases, or about one-tenth of 1%.

A similar trend emerged from sexual abuse allegedly committed by incarcerated individuals, with 81% of those cases reaching inconclusive findings.

GAO separately found federal prison guards faced around 3,000 allegations of sexual abuse from 2020 through 2024, a significant uptick in incident rate from prior years. From 2014 through 2022, BOP averaged 433 allegations against its staff per year. In 2023 and 2024, that spiked to 857 per year.

When an allegation of sexual abuse is made, the bureau deploys an evidence recovery team for and a local nurse conducts a rape kit if the alleged event had just occured. Employees said, however, that they often learn of allegations well after the fact, such as after an inmate transfers from a different facility.

GAO reported last year that BOP’s Office of Internal Affairs had 12,153 open allegations in its employees misconduct caseload, though the agency said most were not related to PREA violations. More than one-third of those cases had been open for at least three years. GAO noted the bureau has ramped up its efforts to address the backlog, including by deploying strike teams of investigators to facilities with particularly large caseloads.

Still, employees told the auditors that they have insufficient staffing for responding to allegations of sexual abuse, including a shortatge of investigators. Longstanding personnel shortages at the agency have led to less general supervision that in turn allows misconduct to fester, officials told GAO. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Trump signed into law last year included $3 billion for BOP staffing, though criminal justice reform advocates have faulted the Trump administration for cutting PREA grants last year.

Abusers also employ tactics to avoid repercussions. Most of the corrections officers with whom GAO spoke said abusers know where they can go to evade cameras and some said the video quality is poor or not retained for a sufficient amount of time. Employees also said investigations against staff can take time, often years, to complete.

Corrections officers told GAO that false allegations of sexual abuse are prevalent and waste resources and tarnish the credibility of those reporting real incidents. Incarcerated individuals told the auditors that their fellow inmates make false accusations against prison staff as a form of retribution.

Still, corrections officers overwhelmingly told GAO they “would not hesitate to report sexual abuse perpetrated by employees against incarcerated individuals.”

PREA sought to establish a “zero-tolerance policy” for rape in U.S. prisons while tasking the Justice Department with instituting national standards for preventing, investigating and tracking such incidents. GAO noted sexual abuse “remains a significant problem” in federal prisons despite some progress under the law. The auditors titled a blog post accompanying their report “The Heinous Crimes Haunting Federal Prisons.”

Facilities that have been found to be fully compliant with the law have maintained the highest incident rates of sexual abuse in the country, GAO found. PREA requires ongoing audits of federal prison facilities, but GAO said current practice fails to detect ongoing sexual abuse. When the bureau contracts auditors for those investigations, it does not ensure they meet established requirements and they do not always have access to key documentation.

“Sexual assault is a heinous crime that can have lasting, harmful effects on survivors,” GAO said. “The issues identified through this report highlight that not all correctional facilities are meeting the intent of PREA.”

GAO cited BOP for a slew of additional failures, including its decision to only focus on cultural issues at women’s facilities and not men’s. It noted the bureau does not publish or analyze uniform data across the bureau to identify trends.

Jolene Lauria, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for administration, said BOP agreed that it must assess its approach on PREA enforcement and vowed to implement all of GAO’s recommendations. Various hiring initiatives will address staffing shortages that lead to coverage issues, officials said, and the agency will look at bringing on staff with specific experience in data analysis. It will also ensure the third-party investigators who conduct PREA audits have access to the documentation they need and review their training and guidance materials to enhance detection of ongoing sexual abuse.

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10 years after OPM data breach, identity protection benefits for affected feds start to expire

Eric Katz and David DiMolfetta — Tue, 05 May 2026 13:49:26 -0400

A decade after the 2015 breach of the Office of Personnel Management exposed roughly 22 million records, identity theft protection services for affected federal workers and their families are beginning to expire, marking the end of a long-running federal response to one of the government’s most damaging cyber intrusions.

Those who signed up for the MyIDCare program OPM established 10 years ago are receiving emails on a rolling basis informing them their services will expire 10 years to the day of their enrollment. The notices began going out to enrollees late last year and will continue through September, the end of the current fiscal year.

“This is to notify you that the credit monitoring and identity theft insurance coverage you were provided by the Federal government has a 10-year term, which ends on [10 years after enrollment date],” reads an April email viewed by Government Executive from MyIDCare, the OPM-backed service that offered credit monitoring, dark web scanning, insurance and recovery services to those impacted in the breach. The emails are now being sent to breach victims who enrolled in the services.

“This service was provided following the 2015 OPM cybersecurity incidents and has helped safeguard your identity. OPM provided identity and credit monitoring through MylDCare, powered by IDX, in accordance with the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017 for a period of 10 years from 2015 - 2025,” it adds. The email gives users the ability to continue coverage, and links to a URL where they can explore options.

The hack was discovered in 2015, but the intrusions, which were overwhelmingly assessed to have been linked to China, began at least a year prior. OPM disclosed two data breaches in 2015: one that exposed the personnel files of all current and former federal employees and another that released the personally identifiable information of all applicants for security clearances, as well as their families. More than 22.1 million people were impacted by the breaches.

Shortly after the hack was discovered, OPM offered three years and up to $1 million worth of protection services. Congress subsequently required the agency to expand the program to cover 10 years and up to $5 million.

OPM signed two contracts with ID Experts — now IDX — to provide the services, the first worth $340 million and the second worth up to $416 million.

Funding for services officially ended at the end of September, when the federal fiscal year calendar resets.

An OPM spokesperson said the agency looked into extending the program but decided it was too expensive.

“OPM evaluated extending the contract and determined it would not be a responsible use of taxpayer resources, given the high cost of the program and the very low level of claims in recent years,” an agency spokesperson said. “OPM remains committed to protecting sensitive data through robust cybersecurity, privacy, and risk management programs, with continuous monitoring to safeguard personnel information.”

The Government Accountability Office has criticized OPM for overpaying for the services, saying the level of coverage is “likely unnecessary” and may be distorting the identity theft insurance market.

Plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit reached a settlement in 2022 with the government that made $63 million available for those who could demonstrate financial hardship as a result of the breach. A federal judge closed out the case in 2024 after OPM and the Treasury Department doled out just $4.8 million to just more than 5,000 individuals. The remaining $58.2 million was returned to the U.S. Treasury.

One former federal contractor affected in the breach, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, reflected that personally identifying information exposed in the hack used to be viewed as the “most detrimental thing to all of us.”

Today, that’s no longer the case. “Our information continues to be pilfered time and time again,” the former contractor added. “It’s just fascinating how far we’ve come from caring about security and wanting to take the right measures to treating it like an afterthought.”

The end-of-services notifications caught some recipients by surprise. IDX has since peppered recipients with marketing emails imploring them to re-enroll in the service at their own expense, offering 50% off discounts and warning “you’re unprotected” in subject lines.

“It’s disturbing given that the government’s negligence caused people’s personal information to be stolen, and China still has that information,” said one former federal employee who received the termination notice.

One current senior federal agency official affected in the breach told Government Executive that 10 years is sufficient for coverage. “I can understand why they cut it off. It costs money to do that,” the senior official said.

The official added: “I think it’s incumbent on people themselves to protect their credit in their reporting and make sure they keep tabs on it. You can’t expect the government to continue to do that.” They said they would consider enrolling in the plan offered by IDX to continue coverage.

Some lawmakers have continued to push for lifetime coverage for those impacted by the breach, though legislative efforts have failed to advance. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. in a letter to OPM last year highlighted the ongoing threats that breach victims still face.

“The federal workforce was dangerously exposed by the 2015 OPM breach, and millions of impacted individuals will continue to be at risk because of the breach, likely for the remainder of their lives,” Warner said. “Current and former public servants should not be abandoned to bear the risks of the federal government’s failure to protect their sensitive information.”

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FEMA brings back employees it recently let go as it looks to 'stabilize' its workforce

Eric Katz — Mon, 04 May 2026 15:34:07 -0400

The Trump administration is rehiring disaster response staff it just let go in recent months, saying the reversals are necessary due to upcoming events and hurricane season.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is bringing back the employees as the Homeland Security Department has welcomed new leadership and is under pressure from an ongoing lawsuit challenging the dismissals. The staffers, part of the Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery, or CORE, saw FEMA decline to renew their contracts beginning late last year.

All told, around 200 employees lost their jobs and are now being asked to come back, except for those who retired or told FEMA they are no longer interested in the work. FEMA’s reversal came to light as part of a lawsuit the American Federation of Government Employees and other groups brought against the agency over the non-renewals, which they argued were illegally ordered by the Homeland Security Department and would have left FEMA incapable of delivering on its mission.

“As we approach the 2026 hurricane season and the FIFA World Cup, FEMA is taking targeted steps to stabilize our workforce and strengthen readiness,” a FEMA spokesperson said. “Under new leadership, FEMA is addressing outstanding personnel actions to ensure workforce stability and a strong, deployable surge force for upcoming national events and potential disasters.”

CORE employees, who typically serve in two-to-four year stints and generally see their contracts renewed, will, depending on performance and need, have their agreements renewed for one year if they were set to expire between Jan. 1 and May 31 of this year. Employees whose contracts are set to expire starting June 1 will be subject to an additional “functional review” before they can similarly be offered a one-year extension. After all employees go through such a review, they will become eligible for normal renewals of two-to-four years.

FEMA leadership has said as part of court depositions that DHS ordered the agency to develop plans to cut 50% of its workforce. Work on the plan to implement widespread staffing cuts was “put on hold” to implement the CORE non-renewal plan, said Karen Evans, the current FEMA head. She suggested the shedding of COREs was related only to right-sizing the workforce and not necessarily connected to the larger workforce plans.

The agency paused the mass non-renewals when winter storms hit much of the country in January. FEMA’s decision to rehire the CORE it had let go earlier this year was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lawsuit has proved a major nuisance for the administration, as more officials are deposed and more internal documents are ordered released to the court. Joseph Guy, a former deputy chief of staff at DHS, was set to be deposed on Monday. Kara Voorhies, a contractor accused of having undue influence over FEMA operations, is still awaiting scheduling for her deposition.

Evans, under court order, has turned over some screenshots of conversations she had on the secure messaging app Signal, though the judge on the case has demanded a more extensive review of her personal phone and an unredacted copy of her personal notes detailing her activities each day. While the judge ordered both of those disclosures to occur on Monday, Trump administration attorneys said Evans had gone to Idaho and it would not be possible to get access to her phone or notes until she returns.

It is not yet clear what impact the reinstatements will have on the lawsuit, and attorneys for AFGE and other plaintiffs on the case have said they are still reviewing the matter.

Cameron Hamilton, who Trump tapped to lead FEMA when he first took office but fired last year, is set to be nominated to once again lead the agency, according to several reports. Hamilton had clashed with then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who Trump has since fired. New DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has pledged to quickly work through the backlog of disaster response work that has built up in the last 16 months, in part due to Noem’s policy to review all expenditures of more than $100,000.

As FEMA looks to stabilize its workforce ahead of hurricane season and to address that backlog, it has also reinstated employees who warned about the agency’s diminished capacity in a public letter last year. More than a dozen employees sat on paid administrative leave for eight months before being reinstated.

FEMA employs around 10,000 CORE employees, about 4,000 reservists who serve on a part-time basis and only activate during disasters and around 5,000 permanent, full-time staff.

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Workers predict significant disruptions to food assistance programs as USDA announces more relocations

Eric Katz — Fri, 01 May 2026 15:51:36 -0400

The Agriculture Department is relocating hundreds of additional employees away from its Washington-area and regional offices, this time focusing on food assistance program employees.

The Food and Nutrition Service will relocate most of its staff to new hubs USDA has established around the country, including to Indiana, Texas, Missouri and North Carolina. The relocations are part of a larger reorganization of FNS, which will now go by the Food and Nutrition Administration, that a union representing the agency’s workforce said would lead to closures of regional offices in Boston, Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco.

The changes are part of USDA's reorganization that will see 2,600 employees shifted from the capital region into the new regional hubs.

FNS oversees 16 nutrition programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Women, Infants and Children, that collectively serve one-in-four Americans annually. The reorganization and relocations will improve customer service and not result in any disruption to program execution, USDA said.

“As part of this reorganization, we are changing our structure from regional offices to Hubs that will offer improved program support across the nation,” said USDA Deputy Undersecretary of Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services Patrick Penn.“This new structure will enhance our customer service to the millions of families reliant on these programs and allow for greater employee and partner collaboration.”

The National Treasury Employees Union chapter that represents FNS workers questioned USDA's claim that no programs would be affected by the changes, suggesting that a large number of employees would refuse the relocation and the resulting loss of staff would have catastrophic impacts on operations.

“SNAP, WIC, and school meals depend on FNS employees,” said Amy Rosenthal, the chapter’s president. “Our workers have built their lives in the communities across America where they live. Asking them to make the impossible choice between uprooting their families and losing their jobs will force most of them to quit.”

Democratic lawmakers in the Washington region—Virginia Reps. Suhas Subramanyam Don Beyer, Eugene Vindman and James Walkinshaw; Maryland Reps. Steny Hoyer, Glenn Ivey, April McClain Delaney, Kweisi Mfume and Jamie Raskin; and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.—said the changes amounted to a “mass layoff and illegal reorganization under the guise of a relocation” that would force employees to choose between their careers and uprooting their lives.

“In one swift move, the administration is undercutting food assistance, food safety, and farmers. This will make every single American less healthy and less safe," they said in a joint statement, adding the relocations would be a “disaster” and they would do everything they could to fight and reverse them.

Under President Trump, FNS has shed 30% of its workforce. About one-third of the remaining 1,200 employees currently live in the capital region, most of whom report to the FNS headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. The agency will leave in Washington its director and “a small footprint” of staff to “be responsive to Congress, interagency needs, regulatory work, and policy coordination.”

SNAP administration will be based in Indianapolis, while Child Nutrition Programs will be relocated to Dallas. A facility in Denver will house Emergency Management and Continuity of Operations, while some staff will also go to Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York.

“If this reorganization moves forward, these programs simply will not function—ultimately risking access to food for mothers, infants, students, children, and elderly people across the country,” NTEU’s FNS chapter said.

The department previously announced it would move its U.S. Forest Service headquarters, and 260 employees, to Salt Lake City, while the department’s Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture, will once again relocate employees to Kansas City. The Food Safety Inspection Service is sending most of its staff to Iowa and Georgia.

USDA’s fiscal 2026 appropriations bill blocked the department from reorganizing or relocating any offices or employees unless Congress authorizes it. The head of USFS recently told Congress his general counsel’s office approved the moves anyway, though Democrats suggested that would play out in court.

Following similar relocations at ERS and NIFA in 2019 moves, both agencies lost more than half of their staff, leading to a significant decline in productivity from which it took the agencies years to recover. The latest USDA reorganization plan received overwhelmingly negative feedback during the public comment period from lawmakers, employees and local governments on the larger USDA reorganization, as well in meetings the department held with tribal governments.

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After reductions, VA chief says facilities can 'hire where they need and what they need'

Eric Katz — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:07:35 -0400

The Veterans Affairs Department can hire any employee it wants at any time, the head of the agency told lawmakers on Thursday as he sought to address concerns about staffing declines and new restrictions that have set ceilings on workforce levels.

No VA facility is facing constraints on bringing in new personnel, Secretary Doug Collins said, who once again stressed that previous hiring efforts outpaced demand for health care through the department. He made the comments despite VA placing staffing caps on each facility that led to the elimination of tens of thousands of vacant positions and were designed to add layers of review to be surpassed.

“We will hire every need that we have in the department,” Collins said before a panel of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Our hospitals have the complete autonomy to hire where they need and what they need going forward.”

Collins’ comments came following his push to reduce VA’s workforce by 30,000 employees last year and the subsequent vacancy eliminations. The reductions have raised some bipartisan concerns, though Collins has maintained that his department was overbloated and VA care has not suffered. Between 2019 and 2025, he said, VA’s workforce grew by 14% while its interactions with veterans increased by just 6%.

VA has put “baselines” into place that set staffing levels for each facility, as Government Executive first reported last year. VA components cannot surpass their high-level personnel caps without approval from the department’s human resources and finance offices. Still, Collins said after the hearing the baselines would not impact any hiring effort.

“They're [full-time equivalent] accounts that are assigned to each facility,” the secretary said. “Those FTE accounts are not in a position to keep anybody from being hired.”

One VA official said it is accurate that VA facilities have "autonomy to hire what they need," but must operate within certain boundaries. They cannot simply hire as many employees as they want, the official said, though they maintain flexibility. Facility leaders have been instructed to escalate anything that has an impact on care delivery and hiring of doctors and nurses is always supported.

After years of growth, VA saw a net decrease in both doctors and nurses in 2025. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., the top Democrat on the subcommittee that held Thursday’s hearing, noted that VA’s fiscal 2027 budget would see further reductions in both categories. He added that proposed increases in the department’s budget would disproportionately go toward private sector care rather than to offerings within VA’s system.

“We see growing demand for VA care, but we're not seeing here the request for the investments in clinical staff to reflect that,” Ossoff said.

Collins noted that VA has eight pilot programs underway to get new hires onboarded more quickly, including by allowing employees to begin working before they fully go through the vetting process. The department is looking to expand those pilots by the end of the year and is hopeful it can bring average time-to-hire to between 30 and 40 days. VA has already demonstrated progress on that front, Collins said.

He also requested lawmakers provide more flexibility on the top pay levels for VA doctors. Congress previously authorized the department to exceed the existing $400,000 pay ceiling for 300 employees, which VA is currently working on implementing. That represents just 1.5% of VA’s doctors, however, and Collins said lawmakers should instead choose five specialties and wave pay caps for all doctors within them.

“My spouse, I have three kids, and at Christmas, she made sure that every kid had the same number of presents to open,” Collins said, alluding to the “inequities” created by the limited number of pay cap waivers Congress created.

Collins acknowledged that VA plans to close a handful of its contract facilities this year, though he said those medical offices were not performing up to the department’s standards and veterans would be able to receive care in other areas.

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Feds that Trump fired without cause can take their appeals directly to federal court, judges say

Eric Katz — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:01:45 -0400

Federal employees fired without a stated cause can challenge that decision directly in federal court without first going to a separate panel designed for civil servants, two judges have ruled in decisions with potentially broad reaching impacts on the Trump administration’s efforts to more quickly dismiss certain workers.

Maurene Comey, a former career attorney in the Justice Department and the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, won the initial decision on Tuesday in a case in which she is appealing her termination last year. Comey has suggested her firing was the direct result of her connection to her father, a longstanding target of President Trump who is also facing prosecution from the administration, or her perceived political beliefs. In a separate case earlier this month, a judge ruled his court was the proper forum for Mary Comans, a former Federal Emergency Management Agency official, to challenge her dismissal.

Comey and Comans are among a slew of employees who the Trump administration has dismissed with no stated reason, instead justifying them by arguing the moves were within the president’s scope of authority. Their termination notices suggested the actions were taken “pursuant to Article II of the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

Justice has taken a particularly aggressive approach in dismissing career staff, beginning just hours after Trump took the oath of office when it fired personnel in the Executive Office of Immigration Review and elsewhere. It has continued to remove employees, including both Senior Executive Service staff and standard civil servants, without cause.

In Comey’s case, New York-based U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman dismissed the administration’s argument that she must take her case to the Merit Systems Protection Board as most federal workers must under the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act.

“The Court concludes that Comey’s case does not fall within the purview of the CSRA’s scheme because she was fired pursuant to Article II of the Constitution, not pursuant to the CSRA itself,” Furman said. “Defendants’ sole reliance on the Constitution — rather than the removal provisions of the CSRA — places Comey’s case outside the universe of cases that Congress intended the MSPB to resolve.”

Trump has fired MSPB’s Democratic head, Cathy Harris, who is now challenging that dismissal before the Supreme Court. The board’s two remaining Republican members recently ruled that some federal employees fired using the Article II justification will no longer have appeal rights before MSPB.

The administration is asserting the employees it has fired are inferior officers under the Constitution and the president therefore has full control over their appointment and removal. Some legal observers have suggested Justice and other agencies are looking to broaden the population of employees it can fire on an at-will basis. The Trump administration has separately created a new classification of federal employees called Schedule Policy/Career, estimating it would allow agencies to fire around 50,000 workers in policy-setting roles at will.

In Comans case, the former FEMA chief financial officer fired after the administration alleged she misused federal dollars when authorizing funds to house migrants in hotels, Virginia-based District Judge Michael Nachmanoff said the terms of the dismissal made federal court the “mandatory” forum for a challenge. Nachmanoff similarly found that because FEMA circumvented civil service law in firing Comans, MSPB was not an appropriate place for her to challenge the decision. The judge dismissed her request for back pay and monetary damages, however.

The judge in neither Comans nor Comey’s cases has yet ruled on the merits of their appeals, which center on the administration improperly side-stepping due process requirements and unlawfully targeting them for political reasons.

Federal workers are typically not considered at-will and current statute requires that agencies provide notice, cause and an opportunity to rebut allegations before a firing can take place. Civil service protections date back more than a century and were most recently solidified in the CSRA. They have taken shape to prevent presidents from interfering with a career workforce of experts for political reasons. Good government advocates have long argued that undermining those protections could return the U.S. government to a spoils system in which political patronage threatens agencies’ capacity to deliver on their missions.

Comey’s initial victory in court came on Tuesday, the same day Justice again brought charges against her father over a social media post it said was threatening the president.

Clarick Gueron Reisbaum, the firm representing Comey, celebrated the judge’s decision.

“No president can ignore the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and federal law to fire a career federal employee based solely on her last name,” the firm said. “We look forward to continuing to vindicate Ms. Comey's constitutional rights and protect our civil service.”

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McMahon distances herself from past Education layoffs, vows some rebuilding even amid elimination effort

Eric Katz — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:51:06 -0400

The Education Department went too far with some of its cuts last year and certain issues were handled in an “inadequate” way, the agency’s leader told lawmakers on Tuesday as she vowed to reempower some parts of her agency.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon stressed that the cuts were in motion before she arrived at the department and in some cases were “difficult” to defend. The department has laid off one-third of its employees and has seen an overall cut of about half of its workforce through those cuts and various incentive programs.

McMahon did not strike an entirely remorseful tone, however, as she repeatedly defended both efforts to outsource core Education responsibilities to other federal agencies and the larger project of shuttering the department entirely. She has overseen 10 partnerships with the departments of State, Interior, Health and Human Services and Labor to date, which has led to Education employees detailing out to those agencies and conducting largely the same work from a different location while remaining on the Education payroll.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee panel that held Tuesday’s hearing, questioned the virtue of such changes.

“You are sending Department of Education employees to work at other agencies to administer the same programs from different buildings,” Baldwin said. “At best, this will prove nothing about what the Department of Education does. It's making everything more complicated for states and local school districts.”

Lawmakers and advocates have repeatedly expressed concerns with the Trump administration’s plans, echoing those within the department both before and after the changes took effect. Baldwin alluded to previous findings of issues with Labor’s grants management, suggesting it was ill-suited to take on even greater responsibilities from Education. McMahon conceded “there are opportunities in every agency to improve their grant programs.”

“There's some hiccups along the way at the beginning, but in the end, this is a program that I believe will help our students,” the secretary said, adding the prevalence of students unable to read or write at their associated grade level made clear that Education required a shakeup.

While McMahon boasted of her success in having “shrunk our bloated bureaucracy,” she acknowledged some services have been negatively impacted and lamented some of the reductions in force.

“The RIF happened a week after I got sworn in,” McMahon said. “The process had been in place to reduce greatly the Department of Education, the number of people there, under very stringent budget requirements that we were given.”

Asked by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., how she could defend the cuts given growing backlogs in some areas, McMahon acknowledged it was a challenge to do so.

“It is very difficult when I’m trying to address those particular issues except to know that those things were happening and we look forward to them stop happening,” McMahon said.

When Murphy pushed back that the resulting challenges were foreseeable due to the staff cuts, the secretary responded, “Well, that is hindsight.” Murphy asked for clarification, leading McMahon to say, “You know perfectly well what that means.”

Several senators focused on backlogs to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and cases before the Office of Civil Rights, with the latter drawing particular scrutiny after the department shed half of the component’s staff. McMahon said the department is working diligently to address casework and has asked laid off OCR staff to return. Education joins the Health and Human Service Department, Interior Department, General Services Administration, Internal Revenue Service and other agencies that have recalled employees it had pushed out.

McMahon suggested the department’s fiscal 2027 budget proposal would lead to the hiring of more attorneys to process claims at OCR. Murphy pushed back, noting the office was slated for a 35% cut in the proposal. McMahon denied the claim, suggesting Murphy’s numbers were inaccurate.

The budget would in fact cut the OCR by 35%, from $140 million to $91 million. As of February, the office employed 327 individuals. While McMahon insisted the budget would increase that total, it instead proposed a total of 271 employees, a 17% reduction. The secretary later said that staffing level “a floor number,” and she was hopeful “we’ll have the ability to increase” it.

The issue was one of several in which McMahon told lawmakers they would have to “agree to disagree,” something Democrats on the panel were reluctant to accept.

“I don’t think it’s a matter of disagreeing,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. “I think it’s a matter of very poor policy.”

In Education’s fiscal 2026 appropriations bill, lawmakers included language prohibit the transfer of funding for interagency agreements without direct support in law and stated that "no authorities exist for the Department of Education to transfer its fundamental responsibilities under numerous authorizing and appropriations laws, including through procuring services from other federal agencies, of carrying out those programs, projects, and activities to other federal agencies.” Lawmakers did not appear to explicitly ban the agreements and details altogether, however, instead asking for biweekly briefings with significant details on the costs, staffing implications and impacts on grantees and other stakeholders.

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From bowling repairs to zoology, Trump admin consolidates job titles affecting 5,000 feds

Eric Katz — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:55:28 -0400

Bartenders, meatcutters, woodworkers and bookbinders will all no longer be official job titles in the federal government after the Office of Personnel Management announced on Friday it was consolidating 115 occupational series that it said are obsolete or redundant.

The change will impact around 5,000 employees, the federal government’s human resources agency said, though the employees will be shifted into new job titles and may not see any impact to their pay. OPM said the consolidated roles, which will be absorbed into the many hundreds of remaining job series, will help streamline positions with low employment or obsolete duties, modernize job classifications, promote more transparent qualification standards and better support hiring based on skills rather than educational attainment.

In the first phase of the overhaul, OPM said it focused primarily on job series with fewer than 100 employees across government, outdated roles that require non-transferable skills, little or no hiring activity over the last few years or no projected need for replacements based on workforce planning. It also identified roles that are duplicative with other occupational categories or that no agency identified a need to maintain.

The impacts will be felt across a wide range of governmental activities. The elimination of the “office automation clerical and assistance” role will affect the most individuals at 862. More than 600 “guides” throughout government — those who give talks, tours, explanations and provide other services to guests at parks and other sites of public interest — will be absorbed into the “general arts and information” job series.

Just two staff involved in “bowling equipment repairing” — whose work includes “minor repairs to bowling approaches and pins” — will see their job series phased out. Many military bases throughout the country maintain bowling alleys on site. The vast activity at military sites account for additional job series the government no longer needs, in part due to the outsourcing of such work, including bakers, bartenders, meatcutters and waiters. Those roles will now be consolidated into the “general food preparation and serving” category.

Some of the eliminated jobs no longer have any people working in them: the government currently employs zero elevator operators or film assemblers and repairers, and the titles will be abolished.

Interior of passenger elevator, showing operator controls. Credit: Library of Congress

One federal HR official praised OPM for the changes, saying it made sense to generally clean up and simplify the list of federal roles and would significantly reduce back-end burdens when hiring for certain specialized or scientific roles.

“It’s the most reasonable and data driven change we’ve seen [from OPM] so far,” the official said.

OPM said the effort would bring “clarity and consistency” across the government and better support the needs of agencies.

“The evolution of work across government, including new technologies, scientific advances, and shifting mission demands, has led many series to become low-use, outdated, or overlapping,” OPM said.

It reminded agencies to follow all existing statutes on pay and grade retention, as well to adhere to their collective bargaining requirements. The agency said it would “provide comprehensive implementation guidance” to ensure a consistent approach across government, protect employee rights and minimize disruption.

OPM acknowledged that employees and stakeholders would have questions about the changes and vowed to ensure a smooth transition. Some of the consolidated jobs require highly specialized skills and extensive hands-on training and those expectations will not change, it said. It will work with agencies to help them write clear position descriptions for specialty, mission-critical jobs.

Some of the impacted jobs are technical or scientific in nature, such as for the government's nearly three-dozen zoologists or its more than 300 employees in fish and wildlife administration. Those employees will become general natural resources managers and biologists. The federal HR official said the more generalized categories will make it far easier for hiring personnel to determine whether an applicant meets minimum qualifications.

As OPM stated, many of the consolidated job functions already appear to be waning in prevalence. The government will no longer hold a specialized title for its nine theater specialists and its lone remaining “coin/currency checker” — whose job is to visually examine finished coins for defects, discoloration or missing letters, as well as U.S. currency, stamps and bonds for any imperfections — will no longer have such a distinct title.

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USDA kicks off more employee relocations, including some that spark déjà vu

Eric Katz — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:15:07 -0400

Updated April 23 at 5:42 p.m.

The Agriculture Department on Thursday announced additional relocation plans for employees as part of its larger reorganization, including a new center for food inspectors in Iowa and a second attempt at sending research staff to Kansas City.

The Food Safety Inspection Service will send out two-thirds of its headquarters staff currently based in Washington, the agency said, to a newly stood up National Food Safety Center in Urbandale, Iowa, a new Science Center in Athens, Ga., or other locations. The Iowa facility will become FSIS’ largest office with 200 people and USDA said the changes will move staff “closer to the agricultural and food production systems that FSIS regulates.”

The department’s Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture, meanwhile, will once again relocate employees to Kansas City. It also did so in President Trump’s first term, though President Biden subsequently moved the agencies’ headquarters back to Washington while keeping the Kansas City offices open. This time around, ERS and NIFA will move employees out of the capital region to Kansas City and bring other employees who have since been shifted to other locations back to that hub.

Following the 2019 moves, both agencies lost more than half of their staff, leading to a significant decline in productivity from which it took the agencies years to recover. The latest USDA reorganization plan received overwhelmingly negative feedback during the public comment period from lawmakers, employees and local governments on the larger USDA reorganization, as well in meetings the department held with tribal governments.

The reshaping of those components is part of a larger USDA reorganization that will see 2,600 employees shifted from the capital region into new regional hubs around the country. In addition to Kansas City, those hubs will be in Salt Lake City, Raleigh, N.C.; Fort Collins, Colo., and Indianapolis. The department previously announced it would move its U.S. Forest Service headquarters, and 260 employees, to Salt Lake City.

FSIS said none of its front-line employees—the inspectors themselves who make up 85% of the agency’s workforce—will be impacted by the changes. It will instead by relocating administrative, technical and support staff, which officials said would reduce duplication and increase accountability.

Justin Ransom, the FSIS administrator, said the moves will improve training and bring more policy expertise to the front-line workforce.

“The National Food Safety Center will help us better prepare and support our workforce while also creating new opportunities to attract and develop the next generation of food safety professionals,” Ransom said.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, has pushed the Trump administration to consolidate office space and move employees out of Washington and openly encouraged USDA specifically to place those workers in her state. The new center will be placed in an existing FSIS building.

The Georgia-based science center will expand upon an existing laboratory in the area and expand capabilities in microbiology, chemistry and epidemiology. The facility will boost access to academic institutions and industry partners, the agency said, and improve recruiting.

FSIS will not issue any layoffs, though employees who reject management-directed reassignments must either accept those roles or lose their jobs. USDA has vowed to provide employees with relocation assistance and other benefits required in statute. Secretary Brooke Rollins told lawmakers this week she was not sure how much those payments would cost. USDA requested $55 million for relocation costs and to prepare buildings for sale as part of its fiscal 2027 budget, though department officials said it hopes to complete the moves this summer so employees with children can enroll their kids in new schools before the school year starts.

The agency plans to leave 100 employees in the national capital region, while also establishing a presence in Fort Collins.

In an email to staff obtained by Government Executive, Ransom said there were still details FSIS was working out and the agency would do its best to provide information as it becomes available.

"I recognize that changes of this scale have real personal and professional impacts," he said. This transition will take place over time and we are committed to working through it together."

In addition to NIFA and ERS, the Agricultural Research Service and National Agricultural Statistics Service—the four components collectively make up the Research, Education and Economics Mission Area—will also be moving staff. As previously announced, ARS will shift employees out of its Beltsville complex comprised of 400 buildings and into field locations around the country. It did not specify where the employees will go, but said they will be better suited to support producers after reporting to locations the agency has identified to absorb additional personnel.

NASS will move some employees out of Washington to Saint Louis and other locations.

“Science is most effective when it’s connected to the people and places it’s meant to serve,” said Undersecretary for Research, Education, and Economics and Chief Scientist Scott Hutchins. “This effort strengthens our ability to deliver actionable research, trusted data, and innovative solutions by aligning our teams more closely with agricultural producers across the country.”

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DHS to again stop paying employees in May if shutdown continues

Eric Katz — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 16:07:36 -0400

The Homeland Security Department will run out funds to continue paying employees next month, the agency’s head said this week, opening the possibility for the DHS to resume normal shutdown activities as the lapse carries on into its third month.

President Trump earlier this month signed a memorandum to order the immediate pay for the ongoing work DHS employees are doing during the shutdown, as well as back pay they earned since the department’s funding lapsed on Feb. 14. More than 100,000 employees who had either been working without pay or furloughed quickly began receiving their checks, while the majority of DHS employees have been paid throughout the shutdown using previously appropriated funds.

DHS spends $1.6 billion on payroll every two weeks, Mullin said on Fox News on Tuesday, and the leftover funds from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that the department has been tapping into are set to run dry after the first pay period in May.

“There is no more emergency fund,” Mullin said. “So the president can't do another executive order for us to use money because there's no more money there.”

Normally, around 92% of DHS employees work during a shutdown without immediate pay, while the remaining part of the workforce is placed in furlough status and sent home. After Trump signed his order, however, DHS recalled all of its furloughed employees back into active status, according to a memorandum obtained by Government Executive. Mullin did not specify what would happen to those employees when existing funds run out next month, though they are likely to be placed back into furlough status.

“DHS is using available funds to ensure employees are paid,” agency leadership told employees earlier this month. “Should the department exhaust currently available funds before an FY 2026 appropriation for DHS is enacted, you will receive a new notification of your work status at that time.”

The shutdown has now dragged on for more than two months and entered its 67th day on Wednesday, by far the longest lapse—either governmentwide or more targeted—in history. Late last month, the Senate unanimously approved a negotiated agreement to fund all non-immigration DHS agencies. The House has so far refused to bring the bill up for a vote, with some members suggesting Republicans would wait until Congress makes progress on funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection to do so.

Senate Republicans took a first step to approving the funding for Trump’s immigration crackdown on Tuesday when it advanced a procedural motion to kick off the process known as budget reconciliation. The lawmakers are looking to use reconciliation to approve multi-year funds for ICE and CBP without requiring any Democratic support, though the a quick resolution is still not expected. Mullin said funding those agencies for the remainder of Trump’s term would enable them to function without risk of further shutdowns.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on Wednesday that Republicans were intentionally keeping the Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Coast Guard and other “law-abiding” DHS agencies shut down despite Democrats agreeing to fund them.

“Republicans are at each other’s throats, tying their party up in knots,” Schumer said. “Democrats stand united, and we stand firm.”

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., predicted his party’s new plan would finally bring an end to the current standoff.

“We have a multistep process ahead of us, but at the end Republicans will have helped ensure that America’s borders are secure and prevented Democrats from defunding these important agencies,” Thune said.

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RFK: Cuts at HHS haven’t led to problems, but we’re hiring 12,000 new employees

Eric Katz — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:17:43 -0400

The Health and Human Services Department is adding back a majority of the positions it slashed last year, with the head of the agency telling lawmakers on Tuesday the hiring spree is necessary to conduct its work.

Secretary Robert Kennedy made the comments despite also telling a panel of the Senate Appropriations Committee there was no degradation in the quality of service after HHS cut 20,000 employees in 2025. The department pushed out the employees because it had grown too much during the Biden administration, he said, though it is now going through a “rightsizing.”

“I do not,” Kennedy said, when asked if HHS had suffered in any way from last year’s staffing cuts. “We are now rightsizing. “We're in the process of hiring 12,000 to make sure we have people to do every job.”

HHS issued 10,000 reductions in force last April and cut an equal number of employees through various incentives and attrition programs. It has since hired back a small fraction of those it laid off. Some of those who remain laid off are still seeking reversal of the RIFs through various lawsuits.

The secretary suggested the cuts were necessary not just because of previous growth, but also due to HHS’ failures. Chronic disease had increased in the United States for an extended period, he said, which demonstrated the department required new staff.

Federal agencies are statutorily prohibited from hiring staff to fill positions previously filled by employees who were laid off. Legal experts warned ahead of the RIFs that using them to get rid of specific employees while filling their roles with new hires would enable those laid off to successfully challenge their removals.

“That is an appeal right there. That is an easy one to write,” Stephanie Rapp-Tully, a federal employment law attorney, told Government Executive ahead of the HHS cuts last year. “One of the triggers of ‘this isn't really a RIF, this is something else’ is when you hire somebody immediately into that position. The idea of a RIF is that it's an elimination of a role, not a person.”

Kennedy did not specify where exactly his department is now looking to grow. HHS currently has hundreds of jobs posted, focused primarily on the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. All of those components laid off staff last year.

Kennedy indicated he did not want to implement cuts at HHS at all, but the directive came down from the White House to do so. In its fiscal 2027 budget proposal, the department proposed cutting its budget by 12%. That represented a far smaller suggestion than the department put forward for fiscal 2026, when it proposed a cut of 25% that Congress largely ignored.

“We were told we need to tighten our belt at this agency,” Kennedy said. “Nobody in the agency wants to cut these programs.”

In a separate hearing earlier on Tuesday, Kennedy told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that “all of these cuts are painful,” but necessary to address the federal debt. Still, he acknowledged the final decision on spending at HHS rests with Congress.

“If you fund the programs, I'll spend the money.” the secretary said. “It's Congress' choice about whether to do it or not. It's not my choice. But we gave you a proposed budget that does what the president wants, which is to have broad cuts.”

Kennedy said that his department had made mistakes, such as when it implemented sweeping cuts to grants at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, only to walk them back a day later. Such errors may occur again in the future, he said.

“I can't tell you that a mistake will never happen again,” he said.

While HHS’ move to regrow the department closer to its staffing total from just before President Trump took office is likely to appease lawmakers across both parties who had criticized the moves, they warned he cannot quickly reverse course.

“Mr. Secretary, you're presiding over of one of the most consequential departments within the federal government,” said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., “and this is no small job, but unfortunately, your actions are dangerous to health care in our country, and it's going to take decades to repair the damage that you've done.”

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USDA is moving forward with various reorgs despite legal questions and bipartisan concerns

Eric Katz — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:00:00 -0400

The Agriculture Department told lawmakers on Thursday it is moving forward with various restructurings despite some bipartisan skepticism over the legality and wisdom of those moves.

The overall USDA reorganization will help streamline a “runaway bureaucracy,” Secretary Brooke Rollins said in her prepared testimony before the House Appropriations Committee. The department is already selling buildings and relocating the headquarters of some of its components, she and other officials said Thursday, despite Congress placing roadblocks on various aspects of those changes.

In a separate hearing, for example, U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said the Trump administration is taking steps to prepare to move all wildland firefighters into a new centralized agency within the Interior Department. Congress blocked that shift from proceeding until a third party assesses the potential change. Schultz said USFS is in the process of contracting out and hopes to complete this fall, but in the meantime is getting ready for the offloading of its firefighting responsibilities.

“There’s a lot of progress we can make before the study is done,” Schultz said. Interior has already stood up the U.S. Wildland Fire Service.

Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, who chaired the USFS appropriations hearing, said he had reservations about the plan.

“This might be the best idea since sliced bread, I don’t know,” Simpson said. “But there are just a whole bunch of questions I need answered.”

USFS, meanwhile, recently announced a reorganization of its own. It will shift around 260 employees to its new headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah, and move around a to-be-determined number of employees in soon-to-be-shuttered regional offices. The reshaping of the agency is part of a larger USDA reorganization that will see 2,600 employees shifted from the capital region into new regional hubs around the country.

USDA’s fiscal 2026 appropriations bill blocked the department from reorganizing or relocating any offices or employees unless Congress authorizes it. Asked about his authority for the changes, Schultz said he consulted with the Office of General Counsel in his agency and was told he could move forward. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, the top Democrat on the Appropriations panel that held the USFS hearing, said she disagreed with that assessment but said attorneys would have to hash it out.

While Schultz said USFS had “too many people,” he vowed not to lay off any employee as part of the reorganization. Some employees will see their offices close, he said, but the agency will work to find new roles for those staff.

Pingree said she could not trust Schultz’s word on that as USFS has not yet shared sufficient details on its plan.

“We haven’t seen this organizational chart, so I have no way to know we’re not going to lose a lot of employees, just as we did last year with the misguided [Department of Government Efficiency] effort,” Pingree said. “We’ve lost a lot of expertise and people who were on the ground and knew what they were doing because this has been so poorly handled by this administration.”

Schultz suggested those details were still fluid and asked the lawmakers to “bear with” USFS, though admitted the agency “will make mistakes.”

Rollins said in her hearing that the Trump administration inherited a department that was “significantly overstaffed,”—USDA shed more than 15,000 employees last year—though she and Schultz vowed to continue and add workers in several areas. She acknowledged that some county offices of the Farm Service Agency are understaffed, but she is working to address the shortfalls. Still, she said, USDA has rolled out technological advancements that will make it easier to absorb a reduced workforce.

The department’s fiscal 2027 budget proposal moves it toward a “younger generation” of farmers with more technological literacy and “a system that requires less headcount.” Rollins said she is working on determining how to ensure each of her offices has the right number of people to complement the new technologies.

Schultz, meanwhile, said USFS has hired around 9,400 firefighters for the upcoming fire season, putting it ahead of its pace for each of the last two years. He plans to have 11,300 on staff before the season begins. The Forest Service shed 5,000 employees last year.

“We’re gonna be prepared,” he said.

He also noted his agency will hire another 2,000 seasonal employees this year and already has offers out to 1,600 of them.

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VA has touted appointment wait time reductions, but new data shows a more mixed reality

Eric Katz and Natalie Alms — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 10:17:24 -0400

The Trump administration has frequently said that appointment wait times at the Veterans Affairs Department are improving despite widespread reductions to its workforce, but internal data reveal a varied picture of how long patients are waiting for health care in some facilities and specialties.

Many VA facilities are struggling to provide veterans with timely access to care in areas like neurology, post-traumatic stress disorder treatment and oncology, according to data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Some facilities and some specialties have fared better, allowing veterans to access appointments more quickly, but the data does not show consistent, comprehensive progress toward faster care for new patients.

“Our wait times were going up,” VA Secretary Doug Collins told lawmakers at a House hearing in February. “So we decided to do something a little unique in this town, we decided to do something about it. We've actually seen over the past year our wait times stabilize or go down.”

The reality of the situation is more complicated.

VA provided wait time data to American Bridge, a Democratic group that gave the raw data to Government Executive.

That data included information from 134 of VA’s 170 medical centers across 10 key specialties with significant data, which collectively make up the bulk of appointments out of dozens of specialties—primary care, mental health treatment individually and in a group setting, substance abuse treatment, PTSD, neurology, physical therapy, pulmonary, oncology and urology.

Government Executive analyzed average wait times for new patients in the first four months of fiscal 2026, October 2025 to January 2026, and compared it to the same period of fiscal 2025, which marked the final four months of the Biden administration. The data did not include appointment volume, which VA does not publish publicly, but instead illustrates how the department is performing on a facility-by-facility basis across different lines of care. The focus of this report is on how the surge of veterans newly seeking VA care are faring given the changes it is undergoing.

VA itself maintains an access standard for how long veterans should wait for direct care conducted by VA itself—20 days for primary and mental health care, and 28 days for specialty treatment—after which point veterans are eligible to seek care outside the VA on the government’s dime.

At the start of fiscal 2026, five of the 10 practice areas saw a majority of facilities met that standard. That’s the same number as a year prior.

For three specialties—physical therapy, substance use disorder and oncology—the number of facilities meeting the VA’s standard actually declined from the previous year, although for seven others, the number of facilities meeting the standard increased.

For neurology, just 7% of facilities met the goal to get veterans an appointment within 28 days, which actually marked a slight improvement from the prior year. Wait times for neurology appointments in the VA’s medical center in Omaha saw the biggest increase, from an average of 27 days to 127 days. In Dallas, wait times jumped from 87 days to 130.

Quinn Slaven, a VA spokesperson, disputed Government Executive’s analysis, saying it relied on incomplete data that fails to account for all of the department’s areas of care and the volume of appointments at each facility, “regardless of whether they serve a few patients or thousands.” VA did not make that data available.

The information at the basis of this report shows how department facilities in the dataset are performing around the country. Slaven also took issue with the focus on new patient data, noting existing patients “make up more than 80% of patients seen by VA staff, and that for this group, average wait times are lower now than they were in FY2024 for primary care, specialty care and mental health care."

In Trump’s second term, Slaven said, “average patient wait times have fallen in four of six major categories of care, after they rose in five of six categories under Biden.” The six broad categories are primary, mental health and specialty care for both new patients, and the same for existing patients. He did not say which categories changed or provide data on those changes.

Collins has consistently beat the drum to highlight improvements in VA wait times. In February he told Fox News that “by better focusing our resources…our wait times in hospitals are improving.” In March he tweeted “it’s a new day at VA” and the department is “slashing wait times.” This week he told Newsmax that he changed the culture at VA to focus on veterans, which led to a “great transformation” and bringing down wait times.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle told Government Executive, however, the data showed VA has yet to make the consistent strides that department officials have suggested it has already achieved.

“While it is encouraging to see wait times improve in certain specialty areas at the Department of Veterans Affairs, there is still more work to be done,” said Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., who chairs the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. “No veteran, especially those facing cancer, addiction or mental health conditions, should have to wait days, weeks or months to receive the care they have earned through their service.”

Progress on wait times is mixed across different specialties. Although about 36% of locations taking new urology patients saw improvements in average wait times, the wait times at half of the VHA’s locations in the dataset got worse. Wait times for the remainder were stable.

Half of the locations offering oncology appointments also saw worsening wait times, with only 31% improving.

For VHA locations offering treatment for substance use, PTSD and neurology, about 48% of facilities saw deterioration in wait times, with only 35%, 45% and 44% seeing improvements, respectively.

Staffing changes

Collins last year put forward a plan to slash VA by 80,000 employees through layoffs and various incentives, but pared back the plan after it received bipartisan pushback. He boasted that VA successfully reached his stated goal of shedding 30,000 employees in fiscal 2025.

As of February, VHA had lost a net 18,626 employees since Trump took office, when accounting for hiring, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management. VA has seen a net loss of around 1,100 physicians and nearly 3,000 nurses, as well as 800 medical support assistants who handle appointment scheduling.

One senior VHA official who spoke to Government Executive on the condition of anonymity to openly evaluate the data, said it showed the department may have been getting ahead of itself in flaunting its accomplishments.

“I also think there is a danger in celebrating too soon or overreacting too soon,” the official said. “There really is a lot of movement based on normal change in the organization.”

Across each specialty at all 134 facilities, VA saw 486 specialties experience worsening average wait times of at least two days. The department saw 427 specialties with wait times improving by at least two days. The remainder stayed fairly stable.

In total, about 42% of specialties on a per facility basis saw patients waiting longer for an appointment, while 37% saw improvements.

Among those with wait time changes of more than two days in either direction, eight specialties saw more facilities with increased wait times rather than decreases. Primary and pulmonary care were the only areas that saw more facilities demonstrate significant improvement.

The data did not offer insights into overall average wait times on a per specialty or department-wide basis.

Dr. Steven Braverman, who led multiple VA medical centers and regional offices before becoming the VHA chief operating officer from late 2024 through September 2025, said that “it is clear from these data that there is a mixed picture of improvement and worsening despite VHA’s efforts toward improvement across the board.”

He noted that larger facilities are facing more difficulties in meeting primary and mental health care standards and are more vulnerable to increases in demand for basic services. Smaller facilities, meanwhile, struggled to keep pace with specialty wait time standards and are particularly vulnerable to the departure of staff in those fields.

Without personnel data and veteran enrollment data, it can be difficult to assign causation for changing wait times, said Braverman, who previously served for nearly 30 years in various Army medical roles.

That said, “very few facilities currently failing to meet wait time standards demonstrated improvement over the past year,” Braverman said. “That suggests a demand versus capacity mismatch that won’t be fixed by efficiency or productivity improvements. That requires increase in hiring or clinical infrastructure to meet growing demand.”

Strains on capacity

Capacity has become a more acute concern after Biden signed the PACT Act into law in 2022, which made millions of veterans exposed to burn pits and other toxins newly eligible for care and precipitated the hiring surge VHA oversaw in the previous administration. The law has both boosted enrollment of new patients and made existing patients eligible for increased level of care.

VA has noted it delivered more appointments than ever before in fiscal 2025 and earlier this month highlighted that 100,000 veterans have newly signed up for health care through VA in 2026, with signups happening at a faster clip than in recent years.

“In FY2025, VA completed 82,083,918 direct care appointments, up 4.1% from FY2024. This overall improvement in average wait times has occurred even as VA is making more direct care appointments than ever,” Slaven said. VA did not provide any data on overall wait times.

The department has highlighted that it has opened 34 new health care facilities across the country since Trump took office, much of which was authorized and funded by the PACT Act. It has allowed for more flexible appointment scheduling at off hours, which it said has led to improved service.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the veterans panel, said that staffing cuts are leading to worse outcomes at VA.

“These findings contradict the Trump Administration’s continued claims that its draconian workforce cuts and hemorrhaging of frontline VA staff have no impact on veterans’ care,” Blumenthal said. “The resulting harm is visible in the increased wait times at many VA facilities nationwide.”

The senator noted VHA has implemented new restrictions on hiring, with special permission required to cross established staffing ceilings, and eliminated many vacant roles. He also called on VA to tap into its statutory authority to pay some doctors more than the $400,000 salaries at which they are currently capped.

Wait times at VA are a longstanding area of concern and they received particular attention in 2014 following a nationwide scandal in which the department was found to have been manipulating its data. That led to widespread reforms, including two efforts to boost veterans’ ability to receive private sector care on the government dime. The Trump administration has sought to boost the use of “community care” after saying its predecessors made the process overly onerous. Moran and others are looking to codify those changes.

VA officials recently told lawmakers that veterans are waiting between four and 54 days for an appointment when referred out to the private sector, depending on where they are and what service they are seeking.

In a January Senate hearing, some lawmakers accused Collins of bringing chaos to VA. The secretary told senators the results spoke for themselves.

“It’s amazing to me that we’ve actually lowered wait times,” said Collins. “It’s amazing to me that through this process we’ve made it easier for our veterans to get this healthcare service they need. If that’s chaos, maybe we’re in the right direction.”

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FEMA came up with a goal to cut half its staff without a plan to get there, records show

Eric Katz — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 17:16:12 -0400

The government’s emergency response agency developed a topline figure to which it would slash its workforce before it developed an analysis of how to reach that total, according to new documents and testimony from a lawsuit challenging an initial round of cuts, leaving staff to then reverse engineer a pathway to implement the potential reductions.

Officials at the Homeland Security Department tasked Federal Emergency Management Agency leadership with developing various staffing cut scenarios, including one that would have led to the dismissal of half of FEMA’s workforce, new court records show. That plan was ultimately developed and sent back to DHS, as well as the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management, Karen Evans, the senior official currently serving as FEMA’s said in a recent deposition.

Excerpts of the deposition and internal communications on the staffing cuts were recently made public in court filings.

“We didn’t have a plan,” Evans said of the goal to get FEMA to 11,383 employees, roughly half of FEMA’s existing workforce. “That’s why I was tasking the plan.”

Evans, who replaced David Richardson as head of FEMA on Dec. 1, requested that other top officials at FEMA develop a process for meeting the already determined staff cut goal. Richardson had spearheaded the analysis that led to that figure based on “mission essential functions,” Evans said, though she acknowledged the final call on the plan—which she said included various options—came from her parent agency.

“I was told to include an option that would include a 50% cut,” she said, recalling a conversation she had with then-DHS Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Guy.

Evans sent that plan to DHS on Dec. 4 and it was subsequently passed on to OMB and OPM.

The FEMA chief was deposed on March 31 after a chaotic court hearing in which attorneys for the Trump administration contradicted previous, written testimony Evans had provided over the provenance of the staffing cut goals. A federal judge ordered top DHS and FEMA officials to provide depositions, and thousands of pages of related documents, to straighten out the discrepancy.

A union representing FEMA employees brought the lawsuit after the agency terminated hundreds of workers by declining to renew their expiring two or four-year contracts. The non-renewed employees were all part of FEMA’s Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery workforce, who serve in the short-term stints that are typically renewed. The employees, however, have been systematically dismissed at the end of their agreements since late last year, with an exception for the winter storms that hit much of the country in January.

CORE employees are often the first to deploy following a disaster and, according to the lawsuit, some of the terminated workers were in the middle of hurricane relief deployments. FEMA has so far slashed more than 1,000 of the employees since 2024, or about 10% of that workforce. FEMA also employs about 4,000 reservists, who serve on a part-time basis and only activate during disasters, and around 5,000 permanent, full-time staff.

Work on the plan to implement widespread staffing cuts is “put on hold” to implement the CORE non-renewal plan, Evans said. She suggested the shedding of COREs was related only to right-sizing the workforce and not necessarily connected to the larger workforce plans.

In February, however, Victoria Barton, a FEMA spokesperson, said while there was no plan to eliminate COREs en masse, the agency in recent years had been "inflating the workforce beyond sustainable levels” and the reductions would address that. She added the cuts Evans implemented to that workforce "brought a level of scrutiny and accountability" to the agency that it had been lacking.

Evans, DHS human resources chief Roland Edwards and FEMA HR head La’Toya Prieur all confirmed in their depositions that various DHS officials were involved in the decision making related to CORE non-renewals, attorneys for the plaintiffs said.

Plaintiffs in the case released the testimony and documents in asking the judge to compel further document disclosure and depositions from the government. Evans revealed that she chatted with DHS officials, including former Secretary Kristi Noem and her top advisor Corey Lewandowski, on Signal and using personal devices. The government stated those conversations were not related to the case. Evans also produced her own daily notes that she took on the job, but self-redacted them to screen for what she deemed to be inappropriate for disclosure. The plaintiffs are also seeking an unredacted copy of those notes.

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