Government Executive - All Content

USPTO looks to AI agents to ease examiner workloads

Edward Graham — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 13:34:31 -0400

Although agentic artificial intelligence systems are poised to help the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office significantly reduce the time it takes to review applications by streamlining rote tasks, a top official with the agency said the capabilities also have another added benefit — empowering skilled examiners to rely more on human-to-human interactions rather than the typical stream of impersonal correspondence.

Barry Schindler, USPTO’s acting commissioner for patents, said the agency currently has a diverse staff of patent reviewers, including PhD biochemists who review relevant patent applications. Rather than bogging these personnel down with tedious tasks during the three-step pre-exam, examination and post-exam patent lifecycle process, Schindler said USPTO has turned, in part, to a new agentic tool — called Compass — to help.

Examiners reviewing man-made or altered DNA sequences, for instance, first have to see if the submitted sequences are correct before determining whether or not they can be patented.

Schindler said these reviewers frequently have to engage in a “back and forth, back and forth, back and forth” dialogue with applicants, which is largely conducted through written correspondence. Now, Schindler said Compass “does what's called a formality check” to speed along the process.

“So then what happens now? I've got a PhD biochemist who had been hired to do what they were supposed to do,” Schindler said during the Google Public Sector Summit on Tuesday.

With a current backlog of 700,000 applications for review, and a staff of around 9,000 patent examiners, USPTO needs to turn to AI agents for help, he said, adding that further adoption of these tools can help promote more consistency in the review process.

“You as an applicant may get an examiner who has 20 years of experience, and at the same time you may get an examiner who has two years,” he said. “We put our examiners online almost immediately; we have to. We have this backlog. So what we're looking to do with this whole [AI] and [agentic agents thing] is how do we start getting consistency? So that examiner who has two years, how do we impart that knowledge that's similar?”

Providing patent examiners with a consistent review process and giving them AI tools to help navigate often cumbersome tasks, Schindler said, means skilled employees can more fully leverage their talents.

“The thing that is missing — and we don't have time to do it — is the human interaction,” Schindler said, noting that patent examinations are often “a negotiation” between applicant and examiner.

“If part of that iterative process is, instead of the examiner just putting paper — they do paper — back and forth, can we get the examiner on the phone and start having this human interaction? And examiners will say, ‘I love that, but I don't have time because I'm doing this [other stuff],’” he said.

Rather than taking sometimes five years for applicants to receive a patent, Schindler said “we can shorten that to one year, because you can pick up the phone and have conversations” by using agents to help shoulder some of the other workload.

Adoption of these tools, however, doesn’t need to be large. Schindler said even small uses of these capabilities are beneficial and noted that some research studies have shown that too much reliance on AI tools can impair cognitive skills.

“If somebody starts relying on agents and [they] don't understand the fundamentals and don't continue to learn the fundamentals, they can get dumb,” he said. “And so I have that issue that I have to think about: [using] agents, but how does the agent assist and not take over?”

Focusing on the underlying problem, rather than a one-size solution, Schindler added, is a necessity when it comes to maximizing the effectiveness of new capabilities like those offered by agents.

USPTO has previously touted some of the other AI tools it’s rolled out to help improve its internal operations, including an enterprise AI tool named Scout — a chatbot assistant used by personnel to help analyze, draft, research and summarize content.

]]>

ICE wants AI to take on more of its legal workload

Ross Wilkers — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 17:55:51 -0400

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has started to look at the landscape of cloud-native electronic discovery software tools to aid its office responsible for handling legal, regulatory and compliance matters.

ICE is launching this effort to aid its Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, which staffs 2,300 attorneys and 350 support personnel that handle large volumes of cases and related data. This office acts as the government’s sole representative in immigration removal proceedings before the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

Artificial intelligence and agentic AI functions are a must for ICE in its search for a commercially available software-as-a-service platform that can support the full lifecycle of electronic discovery, the agency said in a Monday sources sought notice.

The notice cites potential use cases for the platform as including litigation, investigations, administrative proceedings, Freedom of Information Act-related cases, regulatory matters, congressional inquiries, and other discovery or compliance activities.

ICE’s desired specs for the platform include natural language and semantic search, automated summarization, AI-assisted review and coding, contextual analysis, and agents that can carry out and coordinate multi-step discovery workflows.

The request for information also spells out how the platform should cover information governance and legal holds from initial data collection work to the processing, review, analysis and production stages.

ICE is asking submissions to be sent in the form of white papers that include a capability narrative and responses to functional requirements in AI, agentic AI, governance response structures and questions surrounding the standard Electronic Discovery Reference Model framework.

George Socha and Tom Gelbmann developed EDRM in 2005 to standardize how legal, technical and compliance teams handle electronically-stored information during litigation and investigations.

Responses to the RFI are due by 2 p.m. Eastern time on Oct. 28.

All throughout the RFI, ICE uses the term “Super Intelligence” to comply with President Trump’s September executive order mandating agencies use the SI terminology in official communications.

]]>

‘A rushed and complicated system.’ Federal employees say they’re in the dark over limited top ratings

Jory Heckman — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 17:38:46 -0400

Federal agencies are crunching the numbers on how many employees they can justify getting above-average scores in their upcoming performance reviews, after the Trump administration put a cap on top m arks across the federal workforce.

The Office of Personnel Management in September directed agencies to limit top scores – an “outstanding” score of five, and an “exceeds fully successful” score of four – to no more than 40% of their General Schedule employees during this year’s performance review cycle.

At OPM’s direction, agencies have also stood up “calibration” panels staffed with senior executives to ensure managers and supervisors are awarding ratings fairly.

“A calibration panel is not a rating board that re-rates employees independently. The panel evaluates whether proposed ratings are supported by evidence, applied consistently across organizations, and aligned with agency performance standards,” OPM wrote in guidance this summer.

OPM finalized regulations in July that removed a longstanding ban on a forced distribution system. The federal HR agency wrote that limiting the number of top scores that employees can receive “will curb ratings inflation and increase accountability” across the federal workforce.

Experts in public-sector performance management say calibration panels can help weed out bias in performance scores. But combined with the rollout of a new forced distribution system, they warn this new rating system may pit employees against each other for a limited number of top scores, undermining the collaborative nature of some jobs.

Meanwhile, federal employees and their managers say they’ve been left in the dark about how these sweeping changes are being carried out.

The rollout

Federal workers told Government Executive that several agencies provided little information on how they should prepare self-evaluations that will serve as the basis for their final performance evaluations, and offered few details on the criteria senior officials will use to distribute a limited number of fours and fives.

Some have been told by their agencies that a three – which equates to “meets expectations” – is the default score that many employees will receive. Several managers said these constraints prevent them from giving high-performing employees the scores they deserve.

An IRS manager told Government Executive their program manager “didn’t want to see” any fives or fours – and that a “fully successful” score of three out of five “is what is expected across the board.”

“I’m sick of this constant abuse on good employees. Morale is low – really low,” the IRS manager said.

A manager at the Veterans Affairs Department said four of his five direct reports have “quantifiably achieved at least a 4, but I’m not allowed to give them all a final rating that high.”

“I hate the concept, but what I hate even more is that we weren’t notified of this plan before we issued the FY26 performance plans. Had we been notified first, we could have written the plans in a way that aligns to the rating system,” the VA manager said.

A supervisor at the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration said the agency has instructed managers to lower employee ratings before they are sent to the calibration panels.

“I am a rating official, I rated my employees and the reviewing official concurred. Then the ratings were shared with leadership. Leadership met with us and told us the ones that need to be lowered,” the MSHA supervisor said.

The MSHA supervisor said these instructions from agency leadership were “to show the calibration process is not needed,” and that MSHA’s ratings are “already within the 40% of ‘exceeds’ and ‘outsandings.’”

These annual reviews carry material consequences for federal workers. Earning top scores make some federal workers eligible for financial and time-off awards. Low scores could also make it easier for agencies to remove certain employees. OPM in July finalized a rule emphasizing recent performance reviews over tenure when carrying out reductions in force.

Government Executive reported in January that most agencies sought to push back against OPM’s plan. In internal comments, many warned that enforcing a forced distribution of performance ratings contradicts merit systems principles and reduces collaboration and cohesion among employees.

Deadlines and training bottlenecks

Employees at the Health and Human Services Department told Government Executive that departmentwide and component agency-level trainings on these changes have been unable to accommodate all those looking to attend.

A recent meeting for Food and Drug Administration employees “started off with them having to re-send a link to let in everyone who wanted to attend,” according to an FDA employee who attended. At an HHS-wide meeting, “once again the online meeting did not have enough capacity for all who wanted to attend.”

“We’re scoring people on things we haven’t communicated,” a second FDA employee said, summing up communications from agency leadership about the performance evaluation changes.

This communication gap is mirrored in internal directives obtained by Government Executive, which outline strict timelines and calibration steps that managers must obtain behind closed doors.

In a message to employees, HHS wrote that OPM “will allocate a fixed number” fives to the department, and that the “HHS calibration process will ensure that HHS does not exceed its allocation.”

“The purpose of standardized distribution is not to predetermine individual ratings or replace rigorous performance appraisal. Rather, it is intended to support consistent distinctions among levels of performance across the Department,” HHS wrote.

An HHS spokesperson told Government Executive that the department is following OPM’s latest guidance on performance awards. An OPM spokesperson Kiki Nyoh said in a statement that a 40% cap on above-average performance ratings “best balances meaningful, standards-based ratings with recognizing outstanding performance."

“We will closely monitor FY 2026 results and use that data to guide future appraisal cycles,” Nyoh said.

The American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, which represents employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s headquarters in Atlanta, told members in a recent email that HHS is rushing supervisors to “carry out a rushed and complicated system,” and that setting employees up to compete for a limited number of top scores undermines the collaborative nature of its scientific mission.

“CDC works because people collaborate. That is how public service works,” the union wrote. “A system that requires supervisors to rank teammates against one another risks turning people with a shared mission into competitors for limited recognition. It further erodes trust and creates exactly the wrong incentive for an institution like CDC.”

HHS employees had until Oct. 16 to complete a 6,000 maximum character “self-accomplishment narrative” highlighting their key accomplishments. Rating officials – usually an employee’s immediate manager or supervisor – will soon draft a “summary” of each employee’s self-evaluation, assign a preliminary rating and then rank all employees under their supervision.

According to internal documents obtained by Government Executive, each rating official must “rank each employee relative to the total number (N) of employees they supervise.” Each rating official’s preliminary scores and employee rankings will undergo “review and calibration” by agency-level and department calibration panels.

“Final ratings distribution will be reviewed and approved at the HHS level,” the memo states. Employees will be able to request reconsideration of their final ratings within five business days of receiving them.

“All ratings and narratives are preliminary and must not be discussed with or provided to employees at any time prior to them being approved by HHS senior executive leadership,” the memo states.

HHS employee evaluations will focus on three criteria – “organizational value,” “quality & reliability of demonstrated performance,” and “timeliness and efficiency of results.”

In one document outlining its “calibration factors,” HHS asks rating and reviewing officials to consider how an employee’s work advanced “organizational priorities or mission,” how often employees made mistakes in their work, and whether employees consistently met deadlines. But the document states that this information “should not be discussed with or provided to employees.”

Timelines and anxiety

A similar process is being rolled out at the Homeland Security Department, although some of the criteria employees are being evaluated on vary. Self-assessment forms at the Federal Emergency Management Agency ask employees to evaluate how well they’ve carried out the “administration’s priorities” – which include “executive orders, governmentwide directives [and] efficiency efforts.”

In a presentation to employees, FEMA officials stated that the new forced distribution system is “not a predetermined rating,” and “not a quota assigned to individual employees.” The presentation slides also state this new performance rating system “does not mean employees all receive the same rating.”

According to internal documents obtained by Government Executive, FEMA employees had until Sept. 30 to complete their self-assessments. Self-assessments are voluntary but highly encouraged,” one internal document states.

FEMA’s calibration panel will review employees’ preliminary ratings between mid-October and early November. Final ratings will be determined by Nov. 20 after DHS-level calibration. Employees will be notified of their final ratings in December. Performance awards are tentatively scheduled for February 2027.

The agency’s calibration panel will be led by a group of senior agency employees from each FEMA program office. According to internal documents, the calibration panel will “review preliminary ratings for consistency, fairness and alignment.”

A FEMA employee said staff are concerned their final performance ratings “will come from a panel of senior leaders who don’t know anything about our individual programs.”

“There is an incredible amount of lack of information at nearly every level in FEMA about this,” the FEMA employee said. “Nobody knows how the panels are being selected, what they are supposed to calibrate, and what the point of this new system is that isn’t already being accompanied by the current system.”

“The unspoken fear on everybody’s minds is that assessments from our supervisors and our self-assessments will be used to essentially grade everyone in the department ‘on a curve’ and then use that as a metric to start identifying people as ‘legitimate’ targets for being fired,” the FEMA employee said.

A second FEMA employee stressed the rushed rollout of changes this big, adding that, “in more normal times, they would have started socializing this months in advance.”

“It’s a huge ask for everyone, particularly leadership because they have to figure out and communicate the new system to their teams with little to no guidance,” the second FEMA employee said.

A Customs and Border Protection employee said a similar process is rolling out across DHS.

“The panels review proposed ratings for consistency. They compare across work units and they verify that the ratings are justified by evidence,” the CBP employee said. DHS and FEMA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Weighing the limits

Bob Tobias, distinguished practitioner in residence at the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University and former president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said performance management research shows that “those who perform at the highest level are those who are informed of what the goal is, and regularly informed about whether or not they're reaching that goal.”

“Right now, no one knows what behavior is being asked to be changed,” Tobias said. “All that's happening is a group of people at the end of the process are now evaluating employees. I do not believe that that approach will achieve a goal of increasing organizational performance or individual performance.”

Ellen Rubin, an associate professor of public administration and policy at the University of Albany, said research shows calibration ensures managers are applying the same standards consistently across different teams of employees, and can flag potential bias or discrimination before ratings are finalized.

“Calibration sessions – on their own, in theory – are a good thing,” Rubin said. “But when you introduce the forced distribution rating system, it cuts the legs out from the benefits that could potentially be realized.”

Rubin said a forced distribution system doesn’t root out poor performers, and that creating a scarcity of top scores “undermines collaboration” in team projects.

“There’s decades of research showing that forced distribution rating systems demotivate employees, and lead to ratings that employees think are often unfair,” she said. “There's also a pretty high incidence of force distribution rating systems leading to discrimination complaints. So generally, they are a terrible idea.”

Tobias said OPM’s rollout of a forced distribution system is starting from the assumption that “we've got too many people who are evaluated too high.” A 2016 Government Accountability Office report that found in 2013, 99% of employees received at least a “fully successful” rating.

“If I'm an employee and I get my evaluation, and then all of a sudden instead of being in the top 20%, I'm in the middle, how is that change going to inspire me next year? I don't know why my evaluation’s changed. The whole evaluation process is to give me information so that I can perform better next year. That doesn't happen with this system,” Tobias said.

]]>

Oversight of nuclear material security cut back due to civil service reductions, GAO finds

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 15:35:01 -0400

Staff cuts under the Trump administration at the agency responsible for safeguarding the nuclear weapons stockpile exacerbated longstanding workforce challenges at the National Nuclear Security Administration and reduced oversight of nuclear material security, according to a new watchdog report.

In total, the Government Accountability Office found that NNSA went from nearly 2,000 federal employees in the first quarter of fiscal 2025 to 1,755 civil servants as of the second quarter of fiscal 2026. This included a 13.6% reduction in the number of “mission-critical” workers.

While GAO in 2024 warned that NNSA was understaffed, auditors determined that the recent staff cuts “more than erased” hiring that the agency conducted in previous fiscal years.

As a consequence, officials told GAO that they’ve had to cut back on some oversight, including of nuclear material security. The security office at one location, for example, lost about 40% of its employees that performed such work.

The auditors reported that agency officials are trying to find efficiencies using artificial intelligence and overhauling their recruiting strategies, but they are facing several challenges.

“Officials noted that the reductions in staff and loss of institutional knowledge have created operational challenges and increased workloads for the staff that remained,” they wrote. “In addition, officials noted that there are limitations on how artificial intelligence can currently be used based on staff expertise and limitations on using the technology in classified settings.”

GAO found that nearly 45% of the recent staff departures were a result of the deferred resignation program, under which the government paid the salaries and benefits of participating employees for several months before they officially separated from the civil service.

NNSA also was impacted by the president’s freeze on federal civilian hiring, but auditors reported that the agency was able to bring on 35 individuals during such period due to an exception for national security personnel.

The report also covers an incident from February 2025 when, as part of the mass firings of new federal employees who were still in their one-year probationary periods, NNSA removed more than 160 such workers. Ultimately, the agency rescinded most of those terminations shortly thereafter.

In response to a request for comment, an agency spokesperson said in a statement to Government Executive that: “NNSA remains focused on ensuring we have the skilled workforce necessary to execute our national security mission. We continue to assess staffing and recruitment needs, improve operational efficiency and prioritize mission-critical positions to support safety requirements, nuclear modernization and deliver on mission priorities.”

GAO has recently issued several reports examining the effects of staff cuts on government services at multiple agencies, including the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Labor and State.

]]>

State Department orders ‘super intelligence’ wording across all official communications

David DiMolfetta and Jory Heckman — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 13:33:21 -0400

The State Department has instructed personnel to replace “artificial intelligence” with “Super Intelligence” in official communications and rename its AI-related programs and systems, bringing President Donald Trump’s terminology change into the daily work of U.S. diplomacy, according to two people familiar with the matter and contents of an unclassified cable obtained by Government Executive and Nextgov/FCW.

The cable — dated Monday and addressed department-wide — tells staff to use “Super Intelligence,” or “SI,” in new letters, emails, public messages, websites, reports, remarks and policy documents, subject to legal exceptions. Existing material should be updated when staff next revise it.

“All official titles and the names of Department governance bodies, systems, platforms, inventories, and programs must use SI in place of AI,” the cable states.

The instructions implement Trump’s Sept. 29 executive order, which directed executive agencies to adopt the new terminology across official communications. The cable shows how that broad instruction is being translated into specific requirements for diplomats and the department’s internal operations.

The order says the wording should reflect the advancing capabilities and promise of American technology. For now, however, it defines “Super Intelligence” as the same technologies and systems covered by the existing statutory definition of AI. In computing science, super intelligence is defined differently than the generative artificial intelligence technologies used today.

In recent weeks, administration officials had previously discussed the terminology change with certain State bureaus, people familiar with the matter said. But the cable appears to be the first organization-wide directive outlining where the new language must be used. The Associated Press previously reported such communications with State’s international organizations bureau.

The transition, while expected for some time, is significant because it would change how U.S. diplomats describe the fast-evolving technology in policy documents and discussions with overseas counterparts.

Foreign organizations retain their own names in internal writings. The cable specifically tells employees not to change references to China’s World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, even as the department replaces the term in its own materials.

The notice also spells out several exceptions to the replacement rule. Employees must preserve language required by law and existing legal citations, including quotations from statutes, regulations, treaties and other legal instruments. Contracts and grants are also excluded, pending further guidance.

Previously published documents, cables and archived web pages should not be revised or reissued solely to change the terminology, it adds. The instructions also preserve the published titles of existing presidential actions, programs and organizations, such as America’s AI Action Plan, unless the department provides further direction.

One program has already changed names. The cable says the American AI Exports Program is now the American SI Exports Program, citing an earlier State Department cable. The program’s public website already uses that name to describe its work helping American companies sell technology overseas.

For staff handling international agreements or departmental rules, the cable directs questions about terminology to the appropriate policy or legal office.

The vocabulary change is already appearing in senior officials’ public remarks. National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross repeatedly referred to AI as “super intelligence” and “SI” during an Oct. 1 discussion on AI safety, following Trump’s order.

Office of Personnel Management CIO Adam Starr also used “SI” in remarks last week, describing efforts to help agencies adopt the technology. Starr said OPM had launched a SuperIntelligence Governance and Adoption Program, or SI GAP, to assist other agencies.

]]>

Trump’s IG pick at the VA is ‘watering down’ oversight, some employees allege

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 05:58:00 -0400

Inspectors general lead watchdog offices that perform independent oversight of federal agencies. The Senate last July confirmed, along party lines, Cheryl Mason as IG of the Veterans Affairs Department. She previously served as chair of the Board of Veterans Appeals during President Donald Trump’s first term and as a senior adviser to VA Secretary Doug Collins.

During her tenure at the helm of the VA’s OIG, Mason has overseen significant staff cuts and watered down the office’s oversight work, according to some employees, who argue that services for veterans are less effective and efficient as a result.

“We all believe in this mission of the VA OIG to ensure that veterans are cared for, and they are being left out of all of these decisions that are being made. That's the bottom-line impact — it's the veteran,” said one employee. “It’s just sad. I work with a bunch of very depressed, demoralized coworkers right now.”

“We don't have the institutional knowledge”

Since the Trump administration began downsizing the civil service at the start of 2025, the VA OIG has lost about 20% of its employees, according to federal workforce data, bringing the number of staffers down to fewer than 950.

Two VA OIG staffers, who preferred to be unnamed due to fears of retaliation, both said the agency has backfilled some positions. Still, they shared that more experienced employees are struggling to balance workloads while also training new auditors and investigators.

“We don't have the infrastructure, we don't have the institutional knowledge and we don't have the programs we used to have in the past when we had [more] staff,” one of the employees said. “So it just becomes burdensome on the team members. I'm asking my staff ‘Hey, will you spend this time and train this [new person]’ while they're trying to do their inspection work. It’s slowing things down, but the expectations still remain that things need to be done timely.”

Another point of contention is that some of the recently hired staffers are permitted to work remotely, while several existing staffers relocated far distances in order to comply with the president’s return-to-office directive for the federal workforce.

The staff cuts appear to have taken a toll: the OIG issued 75% fewer audit reports in the first half of fiscal 2026 than its 2020-2024 average, according to an analysis by the Partnership for Public Service nonprofit.

Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget for the VA calls for a 4% reduction in the OIG’s funding while seeking to boost the department’s appropriation by more than 8%. During a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing with Collins in May, Chairman Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said that he felt the VA OIG’s proposed funding level was too low.

“I hope we can make certain that the IG at the VA is adequately funded to provide oversight, audit, hotline and investigative work,” he said. “And the reduction — the less funding — that's in the budget request seems to me to be damaging to that possibility.”

In response, the secretary said: “We feel like [the OIG] can do everything we need to [with that funding], but that was a number that was also agreed to by [Mason] as well.”

Michael Missal, a former VA IG who was removed by the president last January in a mass firing of the agency watchdogs, warned in an interview with Government Executive that a budget cut would likely equate to fewer auditors and investigators.

“A primary job of the IG is to make sure that money is being spent effectively and efficiently. You're trying to identify fraud, and the larger the [VA’s] budget, the more risk there is of fraud,” he said. “I would think it's a relatively smart investment to increase the IG budget, not decrease it.”

The Trump administration has prioritized combating fraud in federal programs.

“She's not going to let us say this, even if it's true”

During her confirmation hearing to become IG, Mason insisted that she does not have a “close” relationship with Collins.

But The Washington Sun reported in August that Mason regularly brings up her connection to the secretary, eliminated a certain type of alert that publicizes major issues in the VA at his urging and has edited oversight reports to avoid highlighting problems associated with staffing shortages. The department under Collins has sought to restrict hiring.

One of the OIG employees said that Mason has created a “chilling effect” across the agency.

“We look at things like, ‘Can we say this or is this even worth doing the work?’ because the IG is not going to let this out. Her interference with our work, that's the effect of it,” the employee said. “Now the question is, ‘Is this juice even worth the squeeze?’ because she's not going to let us say this, even if it's true.”

Mason told The Sun that she axed OIG preliminary alerts because they were “burdensome and not impactful,” but the OIG employee countered that they are “a very common technique used in the quality and safety realm.”

“The reason we did the [preliminary result advisory memorandums] and developed that was so we could then send it out to [the Veterans Health Administration] and say, ‘Hey VHA, we found this issue at this one facility. Now this could be a one-off, and that's great if it is, but it could be a vulnerability that exists in other places. We're not saying that you need to do any formal actions or develop an action plan, but you might want to just put it out to other facilities and ask some questions,’” they said.

Likewise, the other OIG employee said they’ve been instructed to not make staffing issues “front and center” in reports.

“It's kind of like a word of mouth through the chain of command,” they said. “Sometimes it's from the supervisor, sometimes it's from the supervisor's supervisor. They're like, ‘the IG does not want this. The IG wants this.’”

Mason told The Sun that "her office was waiting for a clearer outline on the department’s workforce goals before raising any concerns about staffing cuts." The IG added that: “It’s not about ‘gotcha’ with the department."

Nevertheless, both employees said that the public can still trust the objectivity of the VA OIG’s work, albeit with caveats.

“The work is still happening. Has it been watered down a little bit? Yes. But I do feel like the integrity of the work remains,” one argued, while the other added, “I would maybe question: Are the reports coming out painting a more positive picture of things at VA than maybe things really are?”

“You're ultimately hurting the agency”

Beyond her policy directives and oversight rollbacks, employees say Mason’s distinct leadership style and personal conduct have further contributed to friction within the agency.

The employees said that Mason frequently wears a badge, such as in this video where she recites Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud pledge, which has a focus on “illegal aliens.”

One of the OIG employees said that Mason wore the badge at a training.

“That was the talk. Everybody was like ‘Oh, did you see her badge?’” they recalled. “It’s unusual to see, at least the VA IG, wearing a badge.”

They also said that Mason refers to herself as a chief law enforcement officer of the VA, including in her July Fourth video message to the OIG.

“I work with law enforcement officers in the agency, and it is very disrespectful to them because they've had the training and they've risked their lives,” the other employee said. “It is a slap in the face to those individuals to have her present this way.”

Missal, the former VA IG, noted that the department has a law enforcement division, which protects VA medical centers and other facilities.

“I don't think anybody thinks an inspector general is a chief law enforcement officer of any agency because Congress set them up to be independent of the agency — not part of the agency,” he said.

In its report, The Sun also found that Mason held up the OIG’s relocation for months in order to ensure that she got a private bathroom at the new office and commissioned her own flag.

In response to several questions about the issues raised by employees in this article — including the impacts of the staff cuts, Mason's influence on what information is included in reports and her use of a law enforcement title — a spokesperson said that the VA OIG does not have a comment.

Mason’s appointment is part of a broader trend of the president installing individuals who previously worked in his administration as agency IGs. The White House last year also blocked funding for the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency — a central watchdog group, which Mason was elected chair of in March — but reversed following pushback from some Senate Republicans.

Missal said he is worried that more partisan IGs will be less likely to tackle “tough issues” in their oversight work.

“If you're afraid of being critical of some of the programs because of partisanship, then you're ultimately hurting the agency,” he said. “You're hurting the people the agency benefits, which, in this case, is veterans.”

]]>

Union seeks new avenue to restore VA contract

Erich Wagner — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 05:00:00 -0400

Just weeks after a federal appellate court cleared the way for the Veterans Affairs Department to declare that its union contracts with the American Federation of Government Employees have expired, the union has filed a new motion it hopes could revive the agreement.

The VA has previously been barred from terminating its union contracts after U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose found the action likely violated employees’ First Amendment rights. But over the summer, the department announced it would let the deals expire on their own in August.

AFGE sought—for the third time—to enforce the preliminary injunction upholding their collective bargaining agreements, arguing that when the VA solicited the union to renegotiate the deal earlier this year, it triggered a clause that automatically extends the life of the current contract until a new one can be ratified. DuBose agreed, and again ordered the CBA’s reinstatement.

But earlier this month, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit found that decision modified DuBose’s original injunction, something improper for a case that has already been appealed. Last week, the VA declared the contract to be expired for more than 95% of its bargaining unit workers.

In response, the union filed a new motion in DuBose’s court, asking her to issue an “indicative ruling” that would modify her earlier injunction and restore the contract for the remainder of negotiations, but only if the First Circuit remanded the case for that purpose.

In the filing, AFGE continued to argue that the terms of the CBA’s automatic extension provision had been met. Despite the department’s claims that the union failed to begin bargaining within 30 days for the notice for renegotiation, the union said the parties continued to conduct ground rules negotiations until management sought assistance from the Federal Service Impasses Panel last month.

“Defendants’ most recent efforts to avoid the preliminary injunction is their manufactured dispute over the phrase ‘agreed-upon term,’” attorneys for the union wrote. “The court imposed the preliminary injunction for the ‘agreed-upon term’ of the master CBA . . . To effectuate the original intent of the preliminary injunction in light of the First Circuit’s ruling and defendants’ subsequent actions, the court should modify the preliminary injunction to specify that it will terminate when the parties have finished negotiating a new agreement.”

On the same day, the union also filed a national grievance, alleging that VA management engaged in bad-faith bargaining and multiple contract violations.

Attorneys for the VA on Monday filed a response to the union’s motion. Though the document does not address the merits of last week’s filing, it objects to the union’s request for an expedited briefing schedule, noting that a decision on the motion would not take effect immediately and citing attorneys’ obligations in other lawsuits.

“Plaintiffs acknowledge that their motion for indicative ruling, even if granted, would have no immediate effect,” the filing states. “Instead, it would merely indicate to the First Circuit that this court would modify the preliminary injunction if, in the future, the First Circuit were to remand for that purpose. A decision from the First Circuit is not imminent—the parties have not yet finished briefing the case—and the First Circuit is under no obligation to remand before it resolves the appeal.”

]]>

This cybersecurity agency is supposed to protect U.S. elections. Officials fear it’s been compromised by Trump

Doug Bock Clark and Andy Mannix, ProPublica — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 17:59:47 -0400

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

A few months into President Donald Trump’s second term, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security made an unusual request of its agency focused on cybersecurity: Secretly acquire a voting machine and hack it.

The appointees wanted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to procure the machine, examine it and report back the findings so they could be given to the White House, according to two former administration officials with knowledge of the request.

The proposition was shocking to CISA’s career staffers, according to one of the former officials. CISA typically worked to thwart hackers. Moreover, the agency had been directed not to alert the voting machine company if it uncovered flaws, contrary to its standard practices. The request made the CISA employees fear they were being asked to take part in political interference.

“My thought was they could keep it in their back pocket to invalidate any [election] results they don’t like,” one of the former officials said. “This goes against everything CISA represents.”

The CISA employees repeatedly told the political appointees that their request was impossible, in part because the agents capable of pulling off such an operation had just been laid off by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative. The appointees eventually stopped pressing CISA.

Though not acted on, the request shows how the Trump administration has tried to use the agency for its own ends while draining it of resources for one of its critical missions: protecting the nation’s voting systems.

In Trump’s second term, his administration has laid off or pushed out more than 1,000 CISA employees, shrinking the agency by about one-third. The president’s 2027 budget proposal would reduce funding for the agency by another $700 million, which could necessitate 900 additional layoffs.

In response, Democratic lawmakers have called for an investigation into CISA’s ability to do its job and demanded answers as to why federal funds are not being used to support election security as directed by Congress.

Since Trump signed the CISA Act in 2018, the agency has worked with state authorities and voting machine vendors to help protect election infrastructure from cyberattacks. During Trump’s second term, though, CISA has abandoned much of this work. Several state election authorities said the agency provided them no assistance — and no explanation for its absence — during the most critical planning stages for the upcoming midterms.

“There is a difference between deprioritizing and being nonexistent,” said Ryan Macias, an election technology and cybersecurity expert who has worked as a consultant for CISA. In 2025 and through mid-September 2026 — when the bulk of preparations for the election typically would have been completed — “they were nonexistent. Literally nonexistent.”

While Trump has repeatedly warned that America’s elections are vulnerable to hacking, in some cases repeating disproven claims, experts said his administration is undermining the federal government’s role in helping secure them.

Though CISA re-emerged in September with a last-minute security plan for the election, some state officials told ProPublica they fear that what is left of the agency has been compromised by a conspiracy-obsessed presidential administration. In recent months, in reviving debunked theories about the 2020 election, the Trump administration has declassified troves of records, including sensitive material that state officials provided to CISA. Some state authorities said they no longer trusted the administration enough to share information with CISA, a key to the agency’s success in past elections.

“They’ve violated the entire premise of that information-sharing relationship,” said one former high-ranking federal cybersecurity official who now advises state governments on national security. “There’s no fucking way they’re ever going to give any information to CISA. And it’s unclear if they ever will in the future.”

A spokesperson for the White House declined an interview request but defended Trump’s handling of election security in an emailed statement. “President Trump has done more than any other President to ensure we have free and fair elections,” said Lauren Bis.

Bis referred specific questions about CISA’s handling of elections to DHS. DHS and CISA did not respond to interview requests or to a detailed list of questions.

“There’s no fucking way [state governments are] ever going to give any information to CISA. And it’s unclear if they ever will in the future.”
A former federal cybersecurity official who advises state governments

Current and former CISA employees and state election officials describe an agency that has become significantly less equipped to help states fight legitimate cyber threats. State leaders say they have used their own resources to shore up gaps left by CISA, such as paying for sensor technology that can detect unusual activity in election networks. But some services, like intel on foreign actors, can’t be replicated. Some people interviewed said they were worried that Trump and his allies continue to ratchet up rhetoric about voting security, particularly about threats to voting machines. Officials in one large voting jurisdiction said they have met privately with machine vendors to come up with a contingency plan if the federal government seizes their machines or declares them unusable.

“I don’t pay attention to what the president says. I pay attention to what his administration does,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said. “And what they’ve done is basically cut us off and left us on our own.”

Defending elections from hackers wasn’t always part of DHS’s remit.

Throughout the mid-1990s and 2000s, a series of cyberattacks rocked the federal government, demonstrating the emerging threat. In 2007, hackers broke into the Pentagon and stole terabytes of sensitive data. The digital heist, by an unknown foreign adversary, was so damaging that one intelligence leader later described it as an “espionage Pearl Harbor.”

Under George W. Bush, DHS underwent a reorganization to more effectively combat terrorism and respond to disasters like Hurricane Katrina. The department dedicated resources under an office called the National Protection and Programs Directorate to help fortify advanced cyber defense systems and important infrastructure. The office’s work ranged from helping secure events like the Super Bowl to protecting chemical plants to issuing cybersecurity warnings to the private sector and the public. In 2018, Trump signed a bill making the office a stand-alone agency, allowing for more federal funding and transforming it into, essentially, the ultimate tech support desk for anything DHS designated “critical infrastructure.” The bill renamed the agency CISA.

Though Trump helped create CISA, he didn’t much appreciate the work the agency did under its old name to expose the extent of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Russian agents had unleashed a massive disinformation campaign, with a Kremlin-backed troll farm creating thousands of social media accounts posing as Americans and promoting Trump, according to bipartisan reports from the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released before the 2020 election. A dozen Russian military agents were indicted for what the Justice Department described as “a sustained effort to hack into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic National Committee, and the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.”

Trump publicly downplayed this interference, but DHS leadership saw the Russia attack as an escalation. In January 2017, before Trump took office, DHS upgraded America’s elections to the status of critical infrastructure. This placed the polls and all voting technology used in federal elections under the watch of what would soon become CISA.

To carry out this function, CISA needed help. But states and voting machine vendors were wary about sharing data on weaknesses in voting systems, fearing it could be exploited if certain details were to become public. State officials were also reluctant to cede any role in election preparation to the federal government.

Gradually, though, CISA and state election officials negotiated a fragile trust. At its center was a commitment: The sensitive information states and vendors shared with CISA would be kept confidential.

“It took years and years of building trust, of talking to election officials, of hiring people with elections experience who could be validators for the work that CISA wanted to do, before they finally built strong working relationships,” said Derek Tisler, who specializes in election security as counsel for the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan institute based out of New York University School of Law.

Under Director Chris Krebs, CISA hosted penetration testing in which its agents would try to hack into a state’s system to locate weaknesses that could then be patched, along with tabletop exercises simulating a series of potential catastrophes around elections. CISA also offered regular secret-level briefings to secretaries of state to share federal intelligence. And CISA paid for sensor technology that looked for potential malicious online activity on election networks, notifying officials about emerging threats.

“The staffing was there, the expertise was there, the visibility was there, the funding was there,” Macias said.

The consortium shared data as run of the mill as spambots as well as more serious threats. If Virginia caught unusual activity in its system, it could let other states know to be vigilant.

While CISA had prepared for attacks from the Chinese and Russian governments, or lone wolf hackers, few there had expected the threat to elections would come from inside the White House. But when Trump refused to concede to Joe Biden in 2020, claiming the vote had been rigged, CISA became a key component of the guardrails that ultimately led to the election results being certified.

The agency, in a statement co-signed by secretaries of state and voting machine vendors, vouched for the election’s integrity, calling it “the most secure in American history.” When Krebs publicly rebutted claims amplified by the White House as “unsubstantiated” or “technically incoherent,” Trump fired him over Twitter.

As Congress prepared to vote on certifying the election results, it was members of CISA, along with the FBI, who convinced then-Attorney General Bill Barr that the conspiracy theories embraced by the president could be explained by human error, not systemic fraud or hacking.

When Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, his administration immediately started to dismantle CISA. The administrative notices were sent out just a couple of weeks after the inauguration and included the team in charge of dispelling disinformation.

For the employees under the DOGE microscope, work became impossible, said one former senior CISA employee. “Those groups couldn’t even order a pizza.”

DOGE laid off people critical to the agency’s election work, including those who’d worked closely with states. The Trump administration cut funding for the technology that monitored web and election servers, blinding the federal government to breaches it had detected.

When it came time for states to prepare for the 2026 midterms, CISA had disappeared.

On the evening of July 16, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, dozens of election officials and their staffs gathered for a reception near Mount Rushmore. It was the third night of an annual conference for secretaries of state, drawing participants from red and blue states. They’d spent the week discussing state voter roll maintenance and voter ID — issues that at times made for disagreements.

At about 8 p.m., a wave of discomfort swept through the crowd, visible on attendees’ faces as they glanced frequently at their phones, according to people at the event. Any minute now, Trump was going to address the nation on election security. Some at the reception worried he would declare a national emergency, as his allies had urged him to do months earlier, and use it as a pretext to direct the government to seize voting machines.

Then reports on the speech began rolling in, and the mood shifted. The claims Trump was making were unsubstantiated and outlandish. Many had been examined ad nauseam, including by those at the reception, and roundly debunked. The collective anxiety that was palpable moments earlier melted away, as many saw the speech as another attempt to revive disproved theories unlikely to be taken seriously by most voters.

“Everyone just sort of guffawed and put their phones away and went to the bar,” recalled Quinn Raymond, co-founder of VoteShield, a nonprofit that works with states to help monitor voter registration data, who was at the event.

Still, if the speech made little impact, records published by the Trump administration to support the president’s claims damaged the already eroding relationship between CISA and state election officials. The material included raw information states had shared with the agency that was supposed to remain private, such as a log of communications from Election Day 2020 detailing activity being monitored in several states.

“It betrayed the trust of all partners who were willing to share information at the time,” said Geoff Hale, who worked on CISA’s elections team from the agency’s inception until last year. Now he specializes in election security at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for digital and civil rights.

Bis, the White House spokesperson, denied that the Trump administration broke any agreements in releasing the information. “The release of such information is exactly the sort of transparency news organizations should applaud,” she said. Bis also defended Trump’s speech, saying it had been fact-checked “by the agencies whose evidence was released and did not mischaracterize any information.”

Hale and others said the speech was one of several instances demonstrating the Trump administration’s reckless attitude toward sensitive data collected by CISA. Earlier this year, Politico reported that acting CISA Director Madhu Gottumukkala had uploaded records to ChatGPT, even though DHS had barred its employees from using the unsecure program. A CISA spokesperson told Politico that Gottumukkala had been permitted to use the technology for a “short-term and limited” basis.

Last May, an independent journalist named Brian Krebs exposed that CISA published private data, including passwords, cloud keys and other information, on its public GitHub page, in a folder labeled “Private-CISA.” A CISA spokesperson told the journalist there was no indication that sensitive data was compromised.

Some state election authorities were also alarmed to see the lengths to which the Trump administration went to legitimize the president’s fixation on the 2020 race.

In fall 2025, Missouri election officials produced a memo stating Andrew McCoy Warner, a Department of Justice official and prominent 2020 election conspiracy theorist, had called several clerks asking for access to voting machines. Tulsi Gabbard, then the director of national intelligence, had also led an operation in Puerto Rico to seize election machines. When the private cybersecurity contractor hired to examine the machines, Mojave Research Inc., failed to find evidence supporting claims about 2020, the federal government became “dissastified” with its services and stopped renewing its contract, its CEO later told reporters.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters in August that Mojave’s work ceased because it had completed its contract. Testifying before Congress in March, Gabbard said the seizing of voting machines came at the request of an assistant U.S. attorney in Puerto Rico.

“What happened in the second Trump administration is from almost day one — I mean, literally the first two months — they took all that was built up by Trump 1 and just decimated it,” said David Becker, founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit that works with state election authorities. “Election officials lost trust in the federal government.”

It didn’t help that, in his speech, the president mocked CISA’s defense of the 2020 election, calling the statement about it being the most secure in history a “very pat line” concocted as part of a deep-state cover-up. One former career CISA employee described being crestfallen at the Trump administration’s erosion of all they’d accomplished.

“We worked so hard to build that trusted relationship,” said Caitlin Durkovich, former DHS assistant secretary for infrastructure protection and co-founder of the cybersecurity firm Civira Partners. “I don’t know how you put it back together.”

A few weeks after Trump’s speech, the state election officials gathered once more, this time for a video call with Nick Andersen, who had replaced Gottumukkala as CISA’s acting director.

Though the primaries were already under way, this was the first time many had met Andersen, a former cybersecurity adviser to Trump’s White House who had joined CISA a year earlier. Andersen is also a district representative for the Republican Party in Virginia, according to the party’s website. In March, he gave a speech to the Fairfax GOP chapter titled “Fighting Democrat Redistricting.”

Speaking over video in August, the boyish-faced former Marine Corps engineer announced that DHS was preparing to release a plan on how it would work together with state officials to secure the election, according to five people who were present at the video meeting, some of whom shared notes with ProPublica.

Many on the call were stunned at what they perceived as a lack of understanding of election planning. Early voting for the general election was just around the corner. They had spent over a year preparing for the midterms, and there was no more time for ambitious work.

Some peppered Andersen with questions: Where had CISA been when there was still time to make improvements?

Andersen blamed any lapses or perceived breaches in trust on the federal government shutdown in fall 2025, twirling his pen uncomfortably and sipping from a Monster energy drink.

Fontes, Arizona’s secretary of state, was blunt about his feelings regarding working with Andersen and CISA, according to several of the people on the call.

“I told him I didn’t trust him,” Fontes recalled in an interview. “I did raise my voice a little bit, because I’m frustrated — very frustrated — that they would have the temerity to come in, clear the entire deck of competent professionals, stop supporting the states, eviscerate the coordination efforts that they had and then suddenly come in and say: ‘Oh, we’re from the federal government. We’re here to help.’”

Indeed, one recently departed CISA official said attempting to do the agency’s typical election work now would be futile. In previous years, CISA had finished almost all its preparations with the states by Labor Day.

“That ship has sailed,” the official said.

CISA published its security plan for the 2026 election on Sept. 24. The 13-page document describes how, over the past two years, CISA has “recommitted to its statutory mission and remains resolute in strengthening the security of elections.”

State officials said their planning will ensure a secure election, even without help from CISA. Yet they and cybersecurity experts worry that Trump will say the election was hacked if Republicans don’t win in November.

The security plan calls for “leveraging collaborative partnerships” with states the agency has abandoned since Trump took office. Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state, said she’d welcome that but was skeptical of the agency’s motivations.

“For CISA to promise election officials now, at this point in time, that they are going to be a resource for the 2026 election is too little, too late,” she said.

]]>

Senator warns hundreds of federal web addresses may lack key spying protection

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 10:52:00 -0400

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is urging the Trump administration to close an encryption gap that could let foreign adversaries track visits to sensitive government websites, including the FBI’s tip portal and a veterans crisis line, according to a letter sent to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Office of Management and Budget on Monday and first seen by Nextgov/FCW.

Wyden asked CISA and OMB to require that agencies implement a web security standard that hides the name of the website someone is visiting. The protocol, known as Encrypted Client Hello, protects the website name when a user’s browser connects to a site and has been supported by major browsers and some web infrastructure providers since 2023.

Wyden’s office identified 350 federal web addresses that lack the encryption specification. They include sites that facilitate intelligence community job applications, immigration services, health information and U.S. diplomatic websites around the world.

“This visibility could lead to malicious eavesdroppers identifying whistleblowers, profiling cleared federal personnel, tracking Americans seeking crisis support, and mapping interactions between agencies,” Wyden wrote to CISA acting director Nick Andersen and deputy federal chief information officer Thomas Flagg.

He also asked OMB, working with CISA and the Office of the National Cyber Director, to require that cloud and network providers support the technology to qualify for federal contracts. He requested responses by Nov. 20.

Nextgov/FCW has requested comments from CISA and OMB.

Federal websites generally encrypt the information people read or submit, though hackers can still learn which sites they visit by monitoring their internet traffic.

The letter singles out two services whose visitors could be particularly vulnerable.

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ Veterans Crisis Line platform uses Amazon Web Services, which does not currently support ECH for the site, according to the letter. Wyden warned that the exposure could help foreign adversaries identify veterans seeking mental health assistance. Additionally, the FBI’s tips.fbi.gov site uses Cloudflare, a provider that supports ECH, but the portal has not enabled it, the senator added, arguing the current arrangement could put people contacting the bureau at risk of identification.

The possible FBI exposure also comes after a prolific criminal hacker group recently stole troves of sensitive employee information tied to the bureau’s jobs portal.

The list of sites without the protocol also includes hotline.oig.dhs.gov, the DHS inspector general’s complaint hotline; civilrights.justice.gov, the Justice Department’s civil rights reporting portal; and apply.intelligencecareers.gov, an intelligence community recruitment site. Federal HIV information sites, including hivinfo.nih.gov and clinicalinfo.hiv.gov, are also listed.

To craft the list, Wyden’s staffers tested federal web addresses using third-party network providers to see if ECH successfully hid which specific websites were being visited, a spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW. The protection only appeared to work on sites relying on Cloudflare’s free service tier, the spokesperson added.

The letter does not establish that adversaries have tracked visitors to any of the listed addresses.

Wyden argued the government can close these gaps using technology already supported by major browsers and deployed across millions of websites. For agencies whose providers support ECH, enabling it can be as simple as changing a setting, he said.

“Modern federal zero trust cybersecurity practices rely on protective software installed directly on agency devices, so enabling [Encrypted Client Hello] would strictly improve the cybersecurity of federal networks,” Wyden wrote.

The effort follows his September call for NSA to update its advice about virtual private networks. A Congressional Research Service analysis requested by his office at the time warned that foreign intelligence services with broad visibility into internet traffic could potentially connect VPN users to websites by comparing traffic patterns.

]]>

Enforcement ‘surge’ from DOJ, IRS uncovers $490M in suspected tax fraud

Jory Heckman — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:06:21 -0400

The Justice Department, working with the IRS and its criminal investigation unit, is stepping up efforts to prosecute cases of alleged tax fraud.

DOJ told reporters Wednesday that the tax section of its newly established National Fraud Enforcement Division is prosecuting 76 individuals for $490 million in alleged tax fraud schemes.

Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald, the head of DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, said that those 76 prosecutions are a mix of new charges filed this week, as well as dozens of convictions through guilty pleas and “numerous sentencings of criminal fraudsters”

DOJ is touting these prosecutions as the results of its first “national tax enforcement surge,” which began in early September.

The Government Accountability Office estimates the federal government loses up to $304 billion in tax fraud annually. McDonald said more taxpayer dollars go to fraudsters every year than the combined budgets of the Departments of Energy, Justice, and Interior.

“No program is off limits for a fraudster. They will take from all of us until there is nothing left. Fraud against the American taxpayer is a crisis of the first order,” McDonald said.

Attorney General Todd Blanche launched DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division in April. So far, it has announced over 1,000 fraud enforcement actions.

“Medicaid fraud, SNAP fraud, HUD fraud, Social Security fraud, SBA fraud, and the list goes on and on,” McDonald said.

The alleged fraud cases include individuals who used other people’s names and tax information to file fraudulent tax returns, and instances of payroll tax fraud – in which employers collect Social Security and Medicare taxes from employees, but pocketed the money instead of paying it to the IRS.

“We are not looking for the person who clicked the wrong button on an online filing form.

We are not looking for the family that misread a line on their tax return, or the small business owner who inadvertently claimed a deduction, but turned out not to qualify. We are looking for people who lied on purpose to take money that they knew did not belong to them,” he said.

IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank Bisigano said improving tax compliance is one of his “top priorities,” that the agency is relying on data analytics to “focus our enforcement efforts where they matter most.”

“Technology can only assist us, and we will continue to invest in it and using it to drive these efforts even further,” Bisigano said.

Bisignano and other senior IRS officials recently told employees at an all-staff meeting that the agency will invest in more AI tools to shrink the “tax gap” between the revenue the IRS collects every year, and the amount individuals and companies actually owe.

IRS Criminal Investigation Chief and Chief Tax Compliance Officer Jarod Koopman said the IRS and DOJ “remain committed to uncovering these schemes and holding offenders accountable.”

“If you purposely exploit the tax system, we will find you, we will prosecute you. And we will not stand by as you continue to steal from the American public,” Koopman said.

DOJ and IRS officials said this won’t be the last tax fraud enforcement surge of its kind. But it's not yet clear how much money they'll claw back from suspected fraudsters.

“Without strong security of protocols at the front end, preventing money from going to fraudsters, at that first step, a lot of that money gets spent – it dissipates,” McDonald said, adding that the fraud Enforcement Division is creating an asset forfeiture and recovery team “so that we can go after the proceeds as best that we can.”

“If those proceeds have gone into, for instance, a Rolls-Royce, or a luxury mansion, or an apartment building in Kenya, or whatever it might be, we will be using those tools as effectively as we can to ensure that we can recover that,” McDonald said.

The IRS, under the Biden administration, planned on tapping into billions of dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act to hire more enforcement personnel. In July 2024, it recovered $1 billion from wealthy individuals behind on their tax obligations.

But Congress has rescinded much of the IRA funding, and the IRS has shed more than a quarter of its total workforce under the Trump administration.

The latest data from the Office of Personnel Management shows the IRS has seen a net reduction of 240 employees in the 1811 criminal investigation job series since Jan. 20, 2025.

]]>

Judge again orders reinstatement of Bureau of Prisons union contracts, but stops short of contempt

Erich Wagner — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 17:10:31 -0400

A federal judge in Connecticut on Friday ordered the U.S. Bureau of Prisons again to reinstate its collective bargaining agreement, ruling that last week’s re-termination of union contracts violated the preliminary injunction he issued last month.

In September, U.S. District Judge Vernon Oliver found that the Bureau of Prisons’ move last year to terminate its union contracts with the American Federation of Government Employees likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act because the agency’s official reasoning was “entirely pretextual.”

But last week, the union reported that several wardens across the federal prison system were instructed not to take action to reinstate the agreements, and at least one employee was denied union representation in a disciplinary meeting in which they were ultimately fired. AFGE’s Council of Prison Locals called for Oliver to enforce his court order and to hold agency leadership in contempt.

The following day, the union reported that some pieces of the CBA were restored on a limited basis—some officials began seeing requests for official time, office space and union representation at a committee meeting approved. But the agency then issued a new termination notice and rescinded prior statements about the first contract cancellation, particularly a blog post from Director William Marshall that stated AFGE wasn’t the “kind of union” he supports.

In a 14-page opinion Friday, Oliver found that last week’s re-termination violated his order, describing the gambit as impermissible “self help.” Such a move would only be fruitful if, as the Biden administration did when it rescinded the “remain in Mexico” policy, the agency presented its new termination to the court prior to implementing it and then requested modification or rescission of the injunction.

“At no point did the defendants in Biden v. Texas seek to disregard a court order,” Oliver wrote. “Instead, they complied with the injunction, despite issuing a new action, and only sought to implement it after moving to vacate the original injunction . . . Here, in contrast, the defendants failed to move the court for amendment, clarification or dissolution. . . Rather than abiding by this order, defendants issued the re-termination memorandum, which purported to terminate the CBA under new rationale.”

But the judge stopped short of granting the unions’ request as it pertained to whether the agency initially “defied” the injunction, and he denied the motion to hold leadership in contempt. Oliver wrote that BOP plausibly raised the notion that “administrative burden” was to blame for the agency’s slow reinstitution of the CBA, and that individual violations of the contract should be handled through its own procedures.

“Individual instances of noncompliance with the CBA, such as failing to allow union representation at disciplinary proceedings or delaying responses to official time requests, are properly addressed under the agreement itself,” the order states. “The CBA has an extensive grievance process for managing individual complaints of noncompliance. Those concerns are properly addressed under the CBA—not by this court.”

In a statement Friday, Council of Prison Locals President Brandy Moore White applauded the judge’s ruling and urged management to comply.

“The employees we represent work in some of the most challenging and dangerous conditions in federal service, and their union contract gives them a collaborative way to speak out when their safety or the safety of the public is in jeopardy,” White said. “Our members deserve nothing less than full compliance with the court’s decision, and we will keep fighting for our members to ensure the safety and security of the workers we represent.”

]]>

VA allows union contract to expire for most employees

Erich Wagner — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:06:45 -0400

The Veterans Affairs Department this week told employees that it has let its collective bargaining agreements with the American Federation of Government Employees expire, weeks after a federal appeals court ruling stayed an order requiring management to honor the deal amid negotiations for a successor deal.

As part of its efforts to implement President Trump’s executive order banning collective bargaining for most federal workers on national security grounds, the VA had sought for months to terminate its union contracts, including two instances where the cancellation was blocked in court.

In July, the VA announced that it would let the contract lapse upon its scheduled Aug. 8 expiration date. AFGE officials argued that when the VA last spring requested to begin negotiations on a successor agreement, it triggered a clause in the CBA that extends its provisions indefinitely until those negotiations are complete.

But VA management said the union failed to come to the bargaining table within 30 days, negating that provision. Union officials, conversely, argue the ground rules negotiations they engaged in throughout that 30-day window meet the clause’s requirements. U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose agreed and again halted the contract’s termination, but a three-judge panel found that decision improperly modified the scope of her original injunction, allowing the department to proceed.

In a message to employees Tuesday, obtained by Government Executive, VA management pitched the removal of AFGE as an opportunity to improve communication within the department.

“Employees and managers can more freely engage in open communications to improve the organization,” the message stated. “You may also see changes to some of the processes and procedures that were previously contained in the now-expired AFGE collective bargaining agreement. Managers have been directed to exclusively follow VA policy for all matters, including, but not limited to, promotions, alternative work schedules, details, hours of work, telework and leave usage . . . You are encouraged to discuss all workplace matters directly with your supervisor.”

And in guidance from the department’s Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer, the department said it would maintain portions of the expired CBA, albeit only for its police officers, firefighters and security guards—jobs exempted from Trump’s executive order. Specifically, management said it would preserve only contract articles pertaining to conditions of employment, and disregard provisions governing non-mandatory subjects of bargaining.

Most VA workers will also lose their Weingarten right to have a union representative present during disciplinary proceedings or other formal discussions, something department first responders will retain.

Similarly, the department will continue to provide union office space in facilities with exempt employees, primarily VA medical facilities. But employees banned from collective bargaining may only enter union office space while off duty.

Management also said that while it is ending its participation in any grievance proceeding or case before the Federal Labor Relations Authority involving “non-exempt employees,” it will continue to participate in cases involving exempt workers, and it will seek to carve non-first responders out of any cases involving a mix of employees.

“If the underlying grievance covers or appears to cover both exempted employees and non-exempted employees, VA should continue to participate in the grievance and arbitration procedure only to the extent it covers exempted employees, but continue to raise EO 14251, the CBA expiration, and all related arguments/positions) . . . at every stage of the grievance and arbitration procedure,” VA wrote. “Further, if the matter involves both exempted employees and non-exempted employees, VA should request the matter be held in abeyance until the litigation related to EO 14251 and VA’s implementation thereof is resolved.”

In a blog post this week, AFGE said it will continue to fight for the restoration of its contract for all VA bargaining-unit employees, and that it is examining potential next steps.

“Notably, the First Circuit [Court of Appeals] did not sanction the VA’s interpretation of the Duration of Agreement article, nor did it give the VA permission to re-terminate the CBA,” the union wrote. “[Our] fight is far from over. We will take every action to defend our contract and the rule of law. The court has not ruled on the underlying issue in this case, which is whether VA Secretary Doug Collins has the right to strip more than 300,000 VA employees of their voices at work.”

]]>

USPS ‘ready to deliver’ ballots in midterms without mail-in voting EO restrictions

Jory Heckman — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:46:20 -0400

Top officials at the Postal Service say the agency is ready to deliver mail-in ballots on time ahead of November’s midterm elections, using the same playbook from previous elections.

USPS executives told reporters on Thursday that the agency will be deploying the same “extraordinary measures” from previous election cycles, and that the agency has a solid record using these measures to ensure ballots get to election officials on time.

USPS officials said this election cycle will largely be business as usual for the agency, after the Supreme Court blocked the agency from implementing an executive order President Donald Trump signed in March imposing new rules on mail-in voting.

A final rule USPS released in August would have required states planning to send mail-in or absentee ballots to provide USPS with a list of participating voters. The final rule also established new barcode and envelope-formatting requirements.

USPS on its website states that it is not “implementing or enforcing” its final rule, and that “our processes and procedures for this year will be consistent with previous election cycles.”

Postmaster General David Steiner said USPS “is ready to deliver a successful election mail season.”

USPS will begin its “extraordinary measures” starting Oct. 24 to expedite the delivery of completed mail-in ballots to election officials. Those include extra deliveries and collections, special pickups, expanded hours at processing plants, Sunday collections and visual checks of various points for ballots.

Steiner said USPS has proven capable of carrying out these extraordinary measures, and that “these procedures have proven successful in past general elections.”

“We are all systems go for next month's midterm general election,” he said.

USPS’ law enforcement agency, the Postal Inspection Service, is investigating suspicious letters, including several sent to state officials who oversee election operations.

Deputy Chief Inspector Brendan Donahue said USPIS and the FBI are investigating a “series of suspicious mailing that have been sent,” including to several secretaries of state’s offices

“This is a series of suspicious mailings. Some of the letters have contained an unknown substance, and we're working closely with our law enforcement partners to respond to each incident,” Donahue said. “I can confirm that we have intercepted some of these letters, and they are in law enforcement possession.”

NBC News reported that in Ohio, Louisiana and Oklahoma were sent packages with an unknown substance. Donahue declined to comment on the number of suspicious letters USPIS is investigating.

The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) said in a statement Wednesday that they are “deeply concerned by these incidents,” and that “threats against election officials and workers have no place in our democracy.”

“Those who administer our elections should never fear for their safety while carrying out their essential duties,” they said.

Incidents like this occurred in previous election cycles. The Guardian reported that in the 2024 election cycle, 14 election offices received mail containing a white powder. In some cases, the substance was determined to be flour. In 2023, the Associated Press reported that election offices in six states also received mail containing white powder – which in some cases contained trace amounts of fentanyl.

Amber McReynolds, chairwoman of the USPS Board of Governors, said the agency has more than enough capacity to deliver ballots on time. USPS processes and delivers about 370 million pieces of mail six days a week. In the 2024 presidential election, more than 165 million individuals voted and USPS handled nearly 100 million mail-in ballots.

“That 165 million total votes is not even half of the volume that we handle on a daily basis,” McReynolds said.

McReynolds said that intelligent mail barcodes that power ballot-tracking systems and visibility of election mail within the USPS network “are so vital for the overall structure to improve.” USPS provides nonbinding guidance to states on envelopes and barcodes, but its final rule blocked by the Supreme Court would have allowed the agency to reject ballots that didn’t meet its standards.

"This work is about more than operational effectiveness. It's also about the public's trust. Every eligible voter should feel confident that the processing and delivery of election mail and the administration of our elections are handled professionally and securely, and that the people involved in these processes are doing everything they can to honorably fulfill their responsibilities,” McReynolds said.

USPS Chief Customer and Marketing Officer Steve Monteith said that in the 2024 presidential election and the 2022 midterm election, USPS delivered 99.9% of ballots from voters to election officials within seven days – and that on average, USPS delivered ballots in less than two days.

“The total number of ballots and so forth is a small percentage, about 1% of the total of what we deliver,” Monteith said.

Adrienne Marshall, USPS director of election and government mail services, said the agency’s goal is to “meet or exceed the impressive election mail performance we had in the 2022 and 2024 elections.”

USPS generally recommends voters drop their completed ballots in the mail at least a week before their state election office’s deadline. Some states may recommend allowing even more time.

USPS as part of cost-cutting measures, has reconfigured its postal processing facilities and transportation network. As part of its “Regional Transportation Optimization” (RTO) strategy, the agency is running trucks less often between processing plants and post offices to transport mail. A recent study from the Brookings Institution found that roughly 40% of mail-in ballots returned by voters come from places where the nearest post office is impacted by RTO.

As a result, the postmark applied at USPS processing facilities may happen a day after a voter dropped their ballot off in the mail. Voters can request a same-day postmark from the clerk behind the counter of their local postal office.

Monteith said RTO has been “about 65% to 70% implemented,” but that implementation will be paused temporarily for the election cycle, starting on Oct. 17.

"We'll have no more implementations of RTO. So what's in place is in place. The recommendation for voters is what we've always said, which if you choose to vote by mail, make sure you know what the requirements are for your election jurisdiction, and then mail at least seven days before that ballot is due," he said.

]]>

CMS hopes to quadruple provider suspensions over next 6 months, official says

Christian Robles — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:38:00 -0400

SANTA FE, N.M. — The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to expand provider suspensions and publish the results of a pilot testing whether artificial intelligence can prevent Medicaid fraud, a senior agency official said Thursday.

The two moves are the latest in the Trump administration’s technology-enabled drive to trim fraud, waste and abuse in federal health care programs. The push has helped yield $41.9 billion in savings for fiscal year 2025, or a 59% increase over the previous year, according to a slideshow CMS Deputy Administrator Kimberly Brandt presented at the ADAPT conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In April 2026, CMS launched a “Medicaid War Room” to curtail fraud, waste and abuse. The CMS arm has stopped $342 million in improper payments as of Sept. 2026 and sent 124 notices of intent to exclude providers, according to the slideshow.

“My hope is that suspension number will quadruple over the course of the next six months,” following new exclusion authority granted by the Health and Human Services Department earlier this week, Brandt said.

With that power, CMS can kick providers out of Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE and other federal health care programs. Brandt previously said she urged congressional offices to give CMS the exclusion authority.

Beyond CMS’ push to exclude certain providers, Brandt noted that the agency is piloting AI and machine learning to detect Medicaid fraud.

The pilots use AI to flag suspicious billing patterns — such as upcoding, phantom services and geographic anomalies — in near real-time before Medicaid payments are made, according to the slideshow. The pilots are also testing a shared platform where CMS, Medicaid Fraud Control Units, program integrity contractors, states and law enforcement work on high-risk cases together.

“If proven out, the goal is to scale this into a national, standardized, continuously improving platform that stops fraudulent Medicaid payments before they’re made,” the slideshow said.

Brandt said CMS will soon publish the results of an Indiana Medicaid fraud pilot the agency conducted with Oracle, and that it is also actively working with five other states on Medicaid pilots. But the agency is also using other technologies to further its mission to combat fraud, waste and abuse.

CMS is utilizing a “Netflix-type algorithm” that compares new providers and suppliers with ones the agency already has a relationship with, Brandt said. The technology allows CMS to put suspicious providers and suppliers on a watchlist for the first six months after they enter a federal health care program. The agency has cut about 67% of those providers and suppliers because they did not follow or comply with program rules, she said.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration announced it cut subsidies for 189,000 people on the Affordable Care Act exchanges after it found those same enrollees had duplicate health care coverage or were dead. The administration said it found some of the duplicate beneficiaries through periodic data matching of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Brandt added that the agency is “doing even more” analysis of the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File so as not to issue payments to dead people, though she did not elaborate on what the analysis was.

Even so, CMS’ use of technology to claw back fraud has not been perfect, Brandt acknowledged.

“There are a lot of things about WISeR that are not working,” Brandt said, referring to a controversial pilot of AI-supported prior authorizations of Medicare items and services that have a high risk for fraud.

Hospitals and Democratic lawmakers have criticized the six-year initiative for delaying and denying seniors’ access to care since it launched at the beginning of the year. The House Ways and Means Committee advanced a provision to end the WISeR program in June, while the Senate has rejected efforts to stop it.

“Especially because of the congressional scrutiny on [the WISeR program, CMS Innovation Center staff] are committed to trying to get that right and get it better,” Brandt said.

Among the lessons CMS has learned from the WISeR model are that technology requires continuous oversight, human clinical review is essential and provider feedback is an important monitoring signal, according to the slideshow.

]]>

HUD’s staffing cuts hurt certain housing services, watchdog finds

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 16:45:51 -0400

Updated at 6:35 p.m. ET Oct. 15

Grantees, property managers and national housing organizations reported to government auditors that it has become more difficult to work with the Housing and Urban Development Department following last year’s staff cuts, according to a watchdog report that was publicly released on Wednesday.

The Government Accountability Office found that HUD’s workforce decreased by about 29% between December 2024 and 2025, going down to roughly 6,300 workers. Most staffers left under the deferred resignation program, and 41% of the departing employees had more than 20 years of department service.

Based on interviews with representatives from 20 housing stakeholder organizations, auditors determined that last year’s downsizing made it harder for these groups to get information from HUD.

For example:

All Fair Housing Initiatives Program grantees and agencies that GAO interviewed reported that they were either unsure who their HUD grant administrator was or had less communication with a newly assigned official.
One organization shared that “questions that previously received same-day responses could take up to 30 days.”
A public housing agency said that it could not access the department’s grant and subsidy disbursement system for three months because “it took time to find a HUD employee with the proper administrative rights to the system to grant [the agency’s] new executive director access to the system. During that period, the PHA used reserve funds to cover salaries, utilities and other operating costs but was unable to pay some contractors.”

GAO noted that HUD has announced several proposals to improve efficiency, including updating IT systems, creating a unified grants system and launching a service delivery improvement initiative. But auditors said that the department did not respond to their request to discuss the status of these programs.

“These initiatives may help HUD modernize and improve the delivery of its programs and services,” they wrote. “However, it is too soon to assess their effectiveness or the extent to which they will help HUD achieve its mission.”

In response to a request for comment, HUD said that it "remains laser-focused on delivering the gold standard of service" and has reduced backlogs of civil rights and fair housing cases.

“Under President Trump and Secretary Turner’s leadership, HUD has restored its commitment to efficiency and stewardship," a spokesperson said in a statement to Government Executive. "While the Biden administration turned a blind eye to this massive amount of waste and abuse, we are standing up for the American people’s hard-earned tax dollars, so every cent serves our most vulnerable instead of lining the pockets of homeless industrial complex millionaires."

In the spring, the department began moving the majority of its headquarters workforce from a building in Washington, D.C., to a new location in Alexandria, Va. The Trump administration has argued that the relocation will save money and provide HUD workers with a better office building.

The District of Columbia in July filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the move, pointing to the lack of congressional approval and a statutory requirement that HUD be established in the “seat of government.” The filing said that more than 80% of headquarters employees have been reassigned to the Alexandria office.

This story has been updated with a statement from HUD.

]]>

AI offers Secret Service unique mission enhancements, official says

Edward Graham — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 16:41:16 -0400

Artificial intelligence is providing the U.S. Secret Service with new capabilities to carry out its protective and investigative missions, the agency’s IT and AI lead said on Thursday, with further adoption of the technologies poised to help it respond even better to future risk environments.

Given the Secret Service’s directive to both safeguard top U.S. officials and visiting dignitaries and to conduct criminal investigations, Chief Information Officer and Chief AI Officer Chris Kraft said “we have to look broadly at what's the art of the possible” when it comes to leveraging AI for its operations.

While Secret Service, like other federal agencies, has leveraged AI to streamline mundane back-office operations or other rote tasks — Kraft noted during the SAP Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C., that “with generative AI, there's huge opportunity to automate things, such as invoice processing or contracts or other capabilities” — its unique mission positions it to utilize some of the more cutting-edge AI capabilities.

The service is trying to navigate an unprecedented threat environment with an understaffed workforce. During an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday, Secret Service Director Sean Curran said threats against the agency’s full-time protectees are up more than 40% since last year, with around 10,000 threats made on those individuals since January.

“I believe that artificial intelligence can help us as we investigate those threats, monitor those threats [and] bring together correlations between seemingly disparate information,” Kraft said, referencing Curran’s interview. “I also think when you look at facial recognition and biometrics, [you see] the things that you can do — and at scale — with artificial intelligence.”

Kraft said, for instance, that an object detection tool could help the agency quickly identify how many individuals are in one space “at a speed that a human is not able to do that.”

The Secret Service currently lists three AI use cases in its most recent public inventory, with two of those uses — a model to support criminal investigations through facial recognition matches and another that is used to decipher license plates from poor-quality images or videos — currently deployed by the agency. Kraft said the agency’s AI adoption is meant to empower Secret Service’s human agents to better carry out their duties.

In an interview with Nextgov/FCW earlier this year, Kraft also said the Secret Service is working to embed AI specialists across its operations to help drive further adoption of AI tools.

Kraft highlighted that initiative on Thursday and said developing an internal AI team will allow experts to “go and work with different parts of the organization and accelerate, where it makes sense, our adoption of the technology.”

]]>

Federal retirees face more than a COLA change in 2027

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

If you’re retired from federal service, a bigger benefit check in 2027 is welcome news. But how much more you’ll get depends on your retirement system, and there are other changes on the horizon that could affect your bottom line.

The cost-of-living adjustment announced this week is 3.6% for CSRS annuities, Social Security benefits, military retirement benefits and VA disability benefits. Eligible FERS annuities will get a smaller 2.6% increase. Here’s what that means for your retirement check.

CSRS retirement and survivor benefits

If you receive a CSRS annuity, your monthly payment will increase by 3.6%. A $4,000 monthly annuity, for example, would go up by about $144, bringing it to approximately $4,144 before deductions. Survivor annuities get the same adjustment, though your first COLA may be prorated based on how many months you’ve been on the annuity roll.

FERS Retirement and Survivor Benefits

Because the COLA is more than 3%, eligible FERS annuitants receive the COLA rate minus one percentage point. The 2027 FERS COLA is therefore 2.6%, not 3.6%. For example, a $3,000 monthly FERS annuity would increase by about $78, to approximately $3,078 before deductions. The FERS spousal Basic Employee Death Benefit is adjusted by the full 3.6% CSRS COLA to approximately $45,377.34 up from $43,800.53 in 2026. The official announcement will be reported by OPM later. This is in addition to one-half of the final annual pay (or average pay, if higher).

COLA increases for FERS annuitants only apply to the retiree’s basic annuity (not the annuity supplement). For survivor annuitants, COLA applies to both the basic survivor annuity and supplement (if payable) annuity. The COLA increase is prorated according to the annuity commencing date during an annuitant’s first year on the annuity roll. This provision applies to FERS annuitants who are eligible for an “immediate” COLA at retirement. Not all FERS annuitants will receive an immediate FERS COLA. FERS COLAs generally do not apply to annuitants who are under age 62 as of Dec. 1, 2025, except for:

Spouse, former spouse, or insurable interest survivor annuitants;
Certain disability annuitants;
Those who retired under the special provisions for law enforcement officers, firefighters, and Capitol Police;
Those who retired under the special provisions for air traffic controllers; and
Those who retired under the special provision for military reserve technicians (age 50, 25 years of service) because they ceased to quality for military membership on account of disability;

FERS disability annuitants receiving the 60% rate during their first year on the disability roll will not receive a COLA increase.

FERS retirees may want to pay attention to proposed legislation, H.R. 491 /S.624: Equal COLA Act that would provide full cost-of-living adjustments, based on the relevant change in consumer prices, to Federal Employees Retirement System annuities. Don’t get too excited about this proposal, however, according to GovTrack.us, this bill is in the first stage of the legislative process. It was introduced by Congress on Jan. 16, 2025, and has only a nine percent chance of passing at this time.

FERS Annuity Supplement Earning Limit

FERS annuitants receiving an annuity supplement are subject to an earnings test. The annuity supplement is reduced if the annuitant earns more than the exempt amount of earnings set forth each year by the Social Security Administration. The Social Security earnings limitation for 2027 is $25,560.00. If a FERS annuitant earns more than this amount, annuity supplement will be reduced by $1.00 for every $2.00 earned over the minimum level unless the annuitant retired under the minimum retirement age and retired under one of the special provisions related to these specific employee populations: law enforcement officers, firefighters, air traffic controllers, military reserve technicians separated for loss of military membership. The 2026 earnings survey will be sent to current retirees in the spring of 2027. The earnings limit for 2026 is $24,480.

Interest Rate for Service Credit Deposits

The official 2027 variable interest rate for FERS and CSRS service credit deposits has not yet been released by the Treasury Department or the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Treasury typically calculates and announces this specific retirement-related interest rate in late November or December for the upcoming calendar year. The 2026 variable interest rate is 4.25%.

Social Security

Social Security retirement, survivor, and disability benefits will increase by 3.6% beginning with benefits payable in January 2027. The Social Security Administration estimates that the average retired-worker benefit will rise from $2,095 to $2,170 per month—an increase of about $75. The exact change for an individual may differ slightly because Social Security applies the annual COLA to the Primary Insurance Amount determined at the Normal Retirement Age (67 if born in 1960 or later). If you choose to retire earlier, your benefit will be lower than your PIA. On the other hand, if you choose to retire after you reach your normal retirement age, your benefit will be higher than your PIA.

Other 2027 Amounts That Change

Social Security taxable maximum wage for the 6.2% FICA tax increases from $184,500 to $192,300.

One credit of coverage is earned if Social Security covered wages $1,970 in 2027, up from $1,890 in 2026 (four credits earned if wages are $7,880 or more in 2027).

Retirement earnings test: the annual limit for beneficiaries under normal retirement age increases to $25,560; the limit for the year a beneficiary reaches full retirement age increases to $67,920 for earnings before the month in the year when the normal retirement age is reached.

Medicare Costs, Part B Premiums, and IRMAA

The 2027 standard Medicare Part B premium, annual deductible, and income-related monthly adjustment amounts have not yet been officially announced. CMS generally releases the following year’s figures in late October or November; for example, the 2026 amounts were released on November 14, 2025. After the 2027 figures are issued, Social Security will generally send beneficiaries a notice in November or early December showing the new benefit amount, Medicare deductions, and net payment beginning in January.

How the Standard Part B Premium Is Calculated

The Part B premium is calculated separately from the Social Security COLA. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) actuaries estimate the coming year’s costs for physician and outpatient services, durable medical equipment, certain home health services and physician-administered drugs, expected use of services, medical-price changes, administrative expenses, and a contingency margin. The standard beneficiary premium is generally intended to finance about 25% of projected Part B costs, with federal general revenues financing approximately 75%. Because it is based on Medicare’s projected costs rather than COLA, the premium can rise by more or less than 3.6%. According to the 2026 Medicare Trustees Report, the estimated standard monthly premium for Part B in 2027 will be $209.50.

How IRMAA Is Determined

Income Related Monthly Adjustment Amount (IRMAA) is an additional charge for higher-income beneficiaries enrolled in Part B or Part D. Social Security generally uses modified adjusted gross income reported by the IRS for the tax year two years before the premium year. Therefore, 2027 IRMAA will ordinarily be based on the beneficiary’s 2025 federal tax return. For this purpose, modified adjusted gross income is adjusted gross income plus tax-exempt interest.

Social Security compares that income with statutory brackets for the beneficiary’s tax-filing status. Part B IRMAA tiers increase the beneficiary’s share of program costs above the standard level—generally to approximately 35%, 50%, 65%, 80%, or 85%. Part D uses separate monthly adjustment amounts for the same income tiers, added to the premium charged by the beneficiary’s drug plan. The exact 2027 income thresholds and adjustment amounts will be known only when the official tables are released.

General Pay Adjustment for Active Federal Employees

Active federal employees may also hear the term annual pay adjustment, but that adjustment is separate from the COLA for CSRS and FERS annuitants. Retiree COLAs are tied to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, while General Schedule pay adjustments follow a different process intended to reflect changes in private-sector wages and geographic pay differences. The GS base pay schedule is usually adjusted annually each January with an across-the-board pay increase based on nationwide changes in the cost of wages and salaries of private industry workers. Most GS employees are also entitled to locality pay, which is a geographic-based percentage rate that reflects pay levels for non-Federal workers in certain geographic areas as determined by surveys conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Under the statutory process, January General Schedule pay has two potential components. The first is an across-the-board adjustment to the GS base-pay schedule, normally derived from the Employment Cost Index for private-industry wages and salaries, measured from the third quarter of one year to the third quarter of the next, minus 0.5 percentage point. The second is locality pay, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics comparisons of federal and nonfederal salaries for comparable levels of work in each locality pay area. The Federal Salary Council reviews the data and makes recommendations to the President’s Pay Agent, which consists of the Secretary of Labor and the directors of OMB and OPM.

The statutory formulas do not necessarily become the actual pay increase. Congress may establish a different amount through legislation, and the President may issue an alternative pay plan when economic conditions or a national emergency make the statutory adjustments inappropriate. The final rates are generally implemented by a presidential executive order near the end of the calendar year, after which OPM publishes the official pay tables.

For January 2027, the president announced an alternative pay plan freezing General Schedule base and locality rates at their 2026 levels. Accordingly, most covered federal employees are scheduled to receive no general across-the-board or locality-pay increase for 2027 unless subsequent legislation changes that result. This pay freeze does not prevent an employee from receiving a within-grade increase, promotion, or other individually applicable pay action.

A separate exception is planned for designated federal law enforcement personnel. OPM has been directed to use special salary-rate authority to provide a 3.8% increase for covered positions, with final occupational and agency coverage to be announced in the special-rate tables. Special salary rates are used to address significant recruitment or retention problems and are generally treated as basic pay for purposes such as retirement deductions, overtime and certain percentage-based incentives.

]]>

The next counterintelligence threat may be hiding in federal hiring

Lindy Kyzer — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 05:00:00 -0400

The federal government spends considerable time determining who can be trusted with sensitive information. But a recent report from the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) suggests agencies should be paying closer attention to what happens before an individual ever enters the personnel vetting process.

Foreign intelligence services are exploiting the very activities government agencies and defense contractors rely on to build their workforces: resume submissions, recruiting outreach, professional networking and expert consultations.

In its latest report, Targeting U.S. Technologies: A Report of Threats to Cleared Industry, DCSA identified approximately 2,900 incidents involving foreign entities seeking sensitive information or technology during fiscal 2025. The agency received more than 22,000 suspicious contact reports during the same period.

While the report focuses on cleared industry, its findings have implications for the federal government, particularly as agencies work to recruit specialized talent, modernize hiring practices and compete for expertise in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, engineering and other mission-critical fields.

The takeaway isn't that federal hiring needs more bureaucracy. It's that agencies need to recognize hiring and professional engagement as potential counterintelligence vulnerabilities and equip the people managing those processes to identify threats.

From resumes to relationships

One of the more interesting findings in DCSA's report is how foreign collection methods are evolving. In the agency's previous annual report, resume submissions accounted for 28% of reported collection attempts, making them the most common method of operation. Exploitation of experts accounted for 21%.

In the latest report, exploitation of experts has moved into the top position, accounting for 28% of reported incidents. Academic resume submissions remain a significant method of contact, accounting for 15%, while email continues to dominate at 30%.

The distinction between a method of operation and a method of contact is important, but so is the broader trend. Foreign intelligence entities are not simply trying to gain access to organizations through job applications. They are increasingly seeking out individuals whose professional knowledge, relationships and technical expertise make them valuable intelligence targets. That should concern anyone responsible for managing the federal workforce.

A federal employee with specialized expertise in acquisition, intelligence analysis, artificial intelligence or weapons systems may be valuable to an adversary even without access to classified information. Knowledge of government priorities, technical challenges, program requirements and organizational relationships can provide significant intelligence value.

The federal resume is an intelligence roadmap

Consider the professional information available through resumes, conference biographies, public profiles and professional networking platforms.

An adversary looking for insight into a particular defense capability doesn't necessarily need to penetrate a classified network to begin identifying relevant experts. Publicly available professional information can help establish who works in a particular technical field, what organizations they support and where they may have developed specialized expertise.

The objective should not be to discourage applicants from demonstrating their qualifications. It should be to encourage relevant, skills-based descriptions rather than unnecessary disclosures about sensitive programs, customers or operational environments.

It should also be to recognize that the federal hiring process isn't just essential to accomplishing the mission. It's a key element of the government's counterintelligence and security posture.

HR is part of the security perimeter

When federal agencies discuss counterintelligence threats, the conversation typically centers on cybersecurity, insider threats, classified information and personnel security. Human resources and recruiting rarely receive the same attention or a similar budget.

The current threat environment and the prevalence of professional credentials and resumes as counterintelligence risks demand a more deliberate relationship between human resources, hiring managers, personnel security and counterintelligence teams.

A security clearance doesn't solve the entire problem

The federal government has invested significant resources in modernizing personnel vetting through Trusted Workforce 2.0, continuous vetting and improvements to investigative and adjudicative processes. Those efforts are important. But they address a different part of the risk equation.

A security clearance determination assesses whether an individual is eligible for access to classified information. Continuous vetting provides ongoing assessment of individuals within covered populations. Neither process eliminates the risk of foreign intelligence entities approaching government employees, contractors, researchers or prospective hires through professional channels.

And we know not every federal employee holds a clearance.

Agencies employ thousands of individuals whose work may involve sensitive but unclassified information, acquisition strategies, proprietary technology, critical infrastructure or specialized technical expertise.

The DCSA findings underscore the importance of treating counterintelligence awareness as a workforce-wide responsibility, tailored to the sensitivity of an employee's role.

That doesn't require subjecting every federal applicant to an intelligence investigation. But it does highlight the importance of a principle emphasized through Trusted Workforce 2.0: considering every vetted worker's role in national security and the risks posed by foreign adversaries.

The government can't afford to make hiring harder

There is a risk in responding to reports like this by adding another layer of screening, another compliance requirement or another reason to delay an already lengthy federal hiring process. That would be the wrong lesson.

The federal government is competing for highly skilled workers in a labor market where speed, transparency and candidate experience matter. After a year of significant cuts and reductions in force, many federal agencies are highlighting significant staffing shortages, specifically in highly specialized skill sets — the exact ones most at risk of foreign targeting.

For agencies struggling to recruit cyber professionals, engineers, data scientists and other specialized talent, a hiring process that becomes more suspicious of applicants rather than more effective at identifying risks could make existing workforce challenges worse.

Agencies can start by giving HR professionals practical guidance on suspicious contacts and reporting procedures. Hiring managers should understand what information can appropriately be shared during recruitment. Employees should receive guidance on unsolicited consulting opportunities and requests for technical expertise.

Protect the talent, not just the technology

Another important implication of DCSA's report is what it says about the value of the federal workforce itself. Foreign intelligence services aren't simply targeting technologies. They're targeting the people who understand those technologies.

The shift from resume submissions toward exploitation of experts suggests that adversaries understand something federal workforce leaders should recognize as well: Institutional knowledge, professional relationships and technical expertise are strategic assets.

The answer isn't to make federal workers harder to find or federal jobs harder to obtain. It's to make the government's hiring and workforce practices smarter about the threats surrounding them.

Because in today's national security environment, the most valuable target may not be a classified document or a sensitive technology, but the person who knows how it works.

]]>

OPM revamps online pay tables, spearheads AI adoption across federal workforce

Jory Heckman — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 17:18:32 -0400

The federal government’s human resources agency is revamping one of the most heavily trafficked tools on its website: annual pay tables for federal employees.

The Office of Personnel Management is planning to launch a new version of the online tables that agencies and employees use to look up federal pay rates each year.

Adam Starr, the agency's chief information officer, said on Wednesday that the agency’s pay rates website gets about 14 million visits each year, but hasn’t changed much since 2011.

“I always like to remember that 'OPM' really stands for ‘other peoples’ money.’ And in this case, it is your money. People come to OPM pay tables, asking us to show them the money, and for years these have been legacy, clunky sites,” Starr said Wednesday at the SAP Public Sector Summit sponsored by GovExec. “It’s not the experience that a federal employee deserves.”

Starr said the revamped OPM pay tables will launch “later this calendar year,” in the first quarter of fiscal 2027.

“We’re launching it in beta. This will be the default, but people can always fall back to the old version if they don’t like this new version. We’ll get feedback from the agencies, from the employees. We can iterate, relaunch, and get this in people’s hands. Because that’s how everyone’s doing it in industry, and government should be no different,” he said.

Starr said OPM tested the pay table redesign with an accessibility expert who uses a screen-reader. He said that individual “had absolutely no issues using it.”

“For too long, I think civil servants have really suffered with outdated technology that doesn’t keep at the frontier,” Starr said, adding that OPM is looking to give employees the “latest and greatest tools.”

OPM’s pay tables are the latest in a series of government website refreshes happening under the Trump administration. The agency last year overhauled its federal workforce data website, and the White House’s Nation Design Studio is on a mission to transform more than 27,000 federal websites.

These efforts culminated recently in the launch of America.gov, a site that allows users to ask a chatbot questions about everything from qualifying for Medicare to finding a job to renewing a passport.

Starr described the OPM pay-table refresh as part of a broader plan to “make every part of the federal experience tech-first,” and to get federal employees “the best support that you need in every stage of your career.”

“This is kind of just an example of many of the modernizations that we’re trying to do across OPM, from consolidating 119 different HR IT systems to answering every phone call in our retirement services contact center,” Starr said.

OPM is also spearheading some of the Trump administration’s latest efforts to foster greater adoption of AI tools across the federal workforce. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month rebranding AI across the federal government as “super intelligence.”

Starr said OPM has launched a consulting program called the SuperIntelligence Governance and Adoption Program (SI GAP), focused on helping other agencies adopt AI tools.

“Every SI transformation industry has HR at the table, and OPM is HR for the government,” Starr said. “Really, it comes down to being able to take measured risk of trusting your

employees with these tools, giving them the opportunity to experiment and reinvent their work — because just using it as a better chatbot or a better Google search is not going to reinvent the way that we have the enterprise work.”

Starr said that agencies – including OPM – have historically been too risk-averse with AI, and haven’t yet seized the “opportunity to reinvent their work” with these tools.

“I imagine a world where every employee is more empowered to do the impactful work that they need to do — that a lot of the tedium of the day can be automated,” he said.

Starr said OPM recently launched an AI agent to help process phone calls for the retirement services team.

“We showed it to the entire agency. People were aghast at how human it sounded, how helpful it was,” Starr said. “Literally today we released a new feature, and we released a new feature on Friday last week. And every day this is getting better.”

The federal retirement backlog under the second Trump administration has drawn scrutiny from House Democrats. The backlog sat at 55,681 pending cases on March 31, down from a peak of 65,237 the previous month. The backlog fell to 8,814 pending cases in September.

“We've historically had a large backlog of retirement claims, and it's not because the employees don't want to do good, but there's been processes that are highly optimized on paper that just can't improve until they're digital. They're now digital, and so how can we now optimize those and lead to faster retirements? How can we onboard people quicker?”

OPM in a recent memo directed agencies to use AI to speed up the hiring process for new employees employees. OPM Director Scott Kupor has also been tapped to serve as vice chairman of the administration’s interagency Super Intelligence Task Force.

Starr said OPM understands the importance of keeping guardrails around the data it holds. OPM in 2015 was the target of a massive data breach, exposing about 22 million federal records.

“We have a high risk tolerance for delighting our customers and a low-risk tolerance for security breaches,” he said.

OPM, he added, has three basic rules for AI use: employees are responsible for the work they produce with AI, can use only approved tools, and must stay signed in with official accounts.

“It’s on the CIO team to make sure this is secure, and just constantly thinking about what are the risks and how do we mitigate it. There are concerns about access to the internet via these tools, so we put in a cached version, so nothing hits the internet,” Starr said. “[We’re] just constantly looking at what are the concerns, knocking that down, and iterating and improving.”

]]>

Trump quietly hired political appointees under a new job classification, good government group reports

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 16:16:10 -0400

The Trump administration installed political appointees at agencies under a new job classification before the position category was formally set up, according to a good government nonprofit, which argued that this incident furthers a trend of officials showing a lack of transparency regarding federal workforce reforms.

In July 2025, the president issued an executive order creating Schedule G, a new job classification for non-Senate-confirmed political appointees in policy-making or policy-advocating roles. Officials said at the time that roles under the category would be targeted to the Veterans Affairs Department.

Shortly thereafter, the Office of Personnel Management issued guidance to agencies on making Schedule G appointments. The government’s HR agency proposed a rule establishing Schedule G in regulation in September; the deadline for members of the public to comment on the proposed rule is Nov. 17.

The Partnership for Public Service reported that, based on publicly reported information, it didn’t appear that the administration was using Schedule G — until last week when updated data on presidentially appointed positions maintained by OPM showed that there are at least 25 individuals serving under the classification. Researchers noted that the number could be higher.

“The [OPM] data reflects what agencies report to OPM, and agencies have discretion over what they share,” Chris Piper wrote. “Twenty-five is what we can see, not necessarily what exists.”

Of the 25 individuals, 22 work at the VA. Researchers emphasized that the earliest appointee began serving in August 2025, more than a year before OPM proposed the Schedule G regulation.

“The fact that the public can see who holds political appointee positions offers transparency, and thus a tool for public and congressional oversight and accountability,” Piper wrote. “But in the case of Schedule G, for more than a year, officials served in a new appointment category with no public record, and the only acknowledgment came through an unannounced data update rather than a report or a press release.”

OPM countered that, even without a final rule, there are still formal guardrails for Schedule G because of its implementing guidance to agencies as well as the executive order itself.

“The pending proposed rule would make conforming amendments to [the Code of Federal Regulations]; it does not establish the underlying authority for Schedule G,” said OPM spokesperson Kiki Nyoh in a statement to Government Executive. “The executive order also cited improving operations at the Department of Veterans Affairs as a rationale for creating the new schedule.”

At the same time as the president has downsized the civil service, the Partnership reported that Trump, at the end of this first year in office, installed more political appointees under Schedule C (i.e. confidential or policy-determining positions) than any other administration in the last 40 years.

]]>

Cost-of-living adjustments for federal retirees to increase next year

Erich Wagner — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 16:03:23 -0400

Retired federal employees are set to see their defined benefit annuity payments increase in January, though many will still receive what advocates call a “diet COLA.”

The Social Security Administration announced Wednesday that Social Security beneficiaries will receive a 3.6% cost-of-living adjustment next year, an improvement from last year’s 2.8% increase. SSA calculates the increase based on the annual change in the third quarter consumer price index for workers.

Federal retirees in the Civil Service Retirement System will therefore receive a 3.6% increase to their annuities next year, but former feds who are part of the Federal Employees Retirement System, launched in the 1980s alongside 401(k)-style Thrift Savings Plan, will see only a 2.6% adjustment.

That’s because FERS’ annual cost-of-living adjustment is based on an extrapolation of the CSRS and Social Security increase. Each year, if CSRS sees an increase of less than 2%, FERS retirees receives the full COLA. But if the figure falls between 2% and 3%, FERS participants receive only a 2% increase, while if the COLA is 3% or more, like this year, FERS enrollees receive that adjustment, minus 1 percentage point.

Organizations representing federal workers and retirees have argued this is inequitable, and support legislation to standardize the COLA across the FERS and CSRS populations. In addition to having access to the TSP, FERS enrollees also pay into Social Security while they work and may draw upon it when they reach retirement.

“With inflation above 3%, FERS retirees will have their COLAs reduced by an entire percentage point, reducing the real value of their annuities,” said William Shackelford, national president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association. “Inflation impacts these FERS retirees the same way as all other retirees, yet they are forced to accept a diet COLA. The Equal COLA Act would remedy this inequity, providing full COLAs to FERS retirees.”

Despite the pending increase in annuity payments, NARFE warned that the improvement threatens to be swallowed up by further increasing costs next year, namely in the form of double-digit average increases to federal workers and retirees’ health insurance premiums in the Federal Employees Health Benefits and Postal Service Health Benefits programs. Some insurance carriers report that premiums could jump by as much as 100% in January.

“This COLA also does not adequately compensate for the sharp increase in the enrollee share of health insurance premiums affecting the federal community, which will rise by an average of 10.9% next year for federal annuitants, following a 12.3% increase for 2026 and a 13.5% increase for 2025,” Shackelford said. “This comes on top of rising prices for many other goods and services.”

Most current federal employees, conversely, are set to have their pay frozen next year, while some law enforcement officers are slated for a 3.8% average pay increase in January.

]]>

ICE resists automatic activation of body cameras despite oversight concerns

Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 15:56:22 -0400

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection need to improve oversight and guidance for federal immigration officers' use of body-worn cameras, according to a Wednesday report from independent federal investigators.

Officials with the Department of Homeland Security, however, resisted a recommendation in the report from the Government Accountability Office that ICE change its current policy, in which agents choose when to manually turn on body cameras, as opposed to automatic activation.

In a response to GAO, the department — which oversees both agencies — argued that automatic activation on a body camera presents a risk to ongoing operations, such as recording sensitive interactions with informants or victims or inadvertently filming bystanders.

GAO said that statement was insufficient. “However, DHS’s response did not include information on environments where automated activation could be effective, or other controls that could help ensure compliance with activating cameras when required by policy,” according to GAO.

Multiple shootings

The report came after multiple high-profile cases of federal immigration officers shooting and killing people during interactions and enforcement actions, prompting calls for wider body camera use.

GAO made seven recommendations to the Department of Homeland Security to update its guidance for body cameras.

The department agreed with six, but disagreed with implementing automated camera activation controls, arguing that ICE’s current policy is sufficient. CBP does have automatic camera activation, which means the body camera turns on and starts recording when a weapon is drawn or emergency lights are turned on.

“Without reliable control activities, ICE risks gaps in documentation and video evidence that can make reviews of incidents more challenging,” according to GAO.

After federal immigration officers killed two U.S. citizens in January during an aggressive deportation drive in Minneapolis, the Trump administration directed body cameras to immigration agents.

In June, there were two back-to-back killings of immigrants in Texas and Maine that prompted border czar Tom Homan to announce that during traffic stops at least one ICE officer will wear a body camera.

Democrats have also pushed for all federal immigration officers to wear body cameras in the wake of the killings and violent interactions from agents that were recorded by bystanders.

Thousands of body cameras distributed

GAO investigators found that as of April, ICE issued 4,800 body cameras, splitting them evenly between its deportation wing of Enforcement and Removal Operations and the investigative law enforcement arm of ICE, Homeland Security Investigations.

And in June, CBP issued approximately 11,500 cameras, mostly to Border Patrol.

But GAO found problems in the cameras’ deployment.

“Most CBP and ICE offices have not developed specific operational guidance that explains how personnel should use, or not use, cameras under their unique operational circumstances,” according to the report. “The lack of guidance at this operational level increases the risk that CBP and ICE personnel will fail to use the cameras as required under policy.”

DHS agreed to the recommendations from GAO that the leaders of ICE and CBP should update their body camera program to include changes in requirements and costs and plan for any contingencies based on current risk.

The department also agreed that CBP and ICE should implement goals to ensure effectiveness for the body-worn camera program and that both agencies should ensure their sub-agencies are also given proper guidance on the expectations and appropriate uses of the body cameras.

]]>

A judge just put USDA’s employee relocation plans on ice

Jory Heckman — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 21:19:43 -0400

A federal judge in San Francisco is putting an indefinite hold on the Agriculture Department’s plans to relocate many of its employees across the country.

U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria granted a stay on Tuesday that indefinitely bars USDA from carrying out relocations for about 2,600 employees while the court continues to review the merits of the case.

A coalition of federal employee labor unions, nonprofits and local governments argued USDA has been trying to circumvent guardrails on USDA reorganization established by Congress in its most recent spending package.

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

Chhabria wrote that there is ultimately “strong evidence that USDA’s planned reorganization activities deviate from Congress’s expectations at the time it appropriated the funds.”

The ruling effectively extends an administrative stay Chhabria issued on Sept. 14 that put a hold on deadlines for all “management directed reassignment” letters USDA has issued so far. Employees who received relocation notices were generally told to report to their new offices by September or October.

The stay specifically bars USDA from “closing or eliminating offices” at component agencies impacted by reorganization plans, or “relocating or reassigning employees or their positions or functions to different and/or new locations outside the local commuting area, including by issuing or enforcing MDR letters or any other notice or directive of reassignment or relocation in whole or in part."

Chhabria wrote his order does not prevent USDA from relocating or reassigning USDA employees in the Washington, D.C. area to other offices within the region. The stay also does not require USDA to return employees to their original duty stations if they were relocated before the judge’s administrative stay on Sept. 14.

Justice Department attorneys representing USDA asked the judge to consider narrowly tailoring his stay to cover only employees represented by the unions. But Chhabria did not grant that request, stating that “the most appropriate remedy is indeed to stay USDA’s reorganization expenditures, full stop.”

“It would be contrary to the public interest to require USDA to keep some employees in their current offices — preventing closure of those offices — while allowing the agency to move other employees to new offices, as this would require expenditure of congressionally appropriated funds on two offices with two sets of employees rather than one,” he wrote.

USDA has two business days to notify its employees about the terms of the preliminary stay, and to post the ruling on its website about the reorganization.

In a Sept. 30 hearing, Chhabria debated how much authority Congress and its appropriations committees have authority over USDA’s reorganization decisions.

While Congress controls funding for federal agencies – and specified that USDA may not “reprogram” any funds for reorganization plans – Chhabria said the specific mechanism lawmakers included in the FY 2026 spending package was unconstitutional.

“Both sides agree that this committee-approval language is unconstitutional,” he wrote, but agreed that ultimately “Congress was actively working to restrict the agency’s ability” to use appropriated funds to reorganize and relocate employees.

“This Court will proceed on the understanding that it has discretion to temporarily halt all the reorganization activities that likely violate the appropriations statutes. And that’s what this ruling will require,” Chhabria wrote.

The judge cautioned the scope of relief from his stay “could end up being quite short.” The Trump administration is likely to appeal his ruling, and spending bill provisions blocking USDA from using congressional funds on reorganization are currently set to expire on Dec. 11.

“If the agency wishes to move forward with its plans to close offices and relocate employees, it will soon have the opportunity to convince Congress of the merits of those plans. Congress, if it agrees, can choose not to extend the restrictions at issue in this case. But until then, USDA is preliminarily enjoined from spending appropriated funds on the challenged office closures and employee relocations,” Chhabria wrote.

USDA agencies saw major staffing losses when they relocated hundreds of D.C.-based employees to Kansas City, Mo., under the first Trump administration — a much smaller-scale plan than what USDA is proposing under the second Trump term.

Citing polls conducted by unions, showing that a majority of their members will not relocate to keep their jobs, Chhabria agreed with plaintiffs that “there is at least some risk that USDA’s office closures and employee relocations would impede these components’ ability to carry out their critical functions,” and in the process, disrupt “programs on which many Americans depend.”

“Although it’s unclear how many employees USDA plans to actually relocate, if the relocations are allowed to proceed, it’s likely that many affected employees will decline to move and will instead leave,” he wrote.

Chhabria added that “it does not appear USDA has conducted any analysis to show that these risks are not real or are outweighed by any potential benefits."

“With respect to the balance of equities and the public interest, the Court has no view on whether USDA’s planned reorganization is a good idea or a bad one,” he wrote. “Perhaps USDA is organized in an inefficient or outdated fashion, such that the harm some employees would suffer from a reorganization could be outweighed by the potential benefit to the taxpayers, not to mention citizens who interact with the agency more directly. But on this record, the balance of equities and the public interest strongly support an stay”

Elena Goldstein, a legal director at Democracy Forward, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said the stay “will allow the vital work of the department and its employees to continue, protecting the families and communities across the nation that rely on its vital work.”

]]>

Disability accommodations at Labor get extra scrutiny with annual reviews

Jory Heckman — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 18:18:10 -0400

Labor Department employees with workplace accommodations in place for disabilities or medical conditions will soon have to justify them annually, as part of an agencywide review that begins next month.

The Labor Department told employees Tuesday that its Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management (OASAM), starting in November, will conduct an annual “recertification” of reasonable accommodations currently in place for employees with disabilities and pregnancy-related medical conditions.

“This is a review of existing, already-approved accommodations to confirm they meet employees' current needs and job duties,” OASAM wrote in the email obtained by Government Executive. “If the review identifies a change in medical needs, job duties, or accommodations' effectiveness, accommodations may be adjusted.”

The email states that this review is “part of ongoing efforts to strengthen the RA program,” but doesn’t shed much light on the department’s motivations for carrying out these changes. A Labor Department spokesman did not immediately comment, but referred Government Executive to the contents of the staff email.

The Office of Personnel Management and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in updated guidance on telework as a reasonable accommodation, wrote in February that agencies may “find it helpful to reevaluate a significant accommodation such as recurring or full-time telework once a year to confirm the accommodation remains effective and manageable.”

Agencies have broadly scrutinized federal employees’ use of telework since President Donald Trump directed them to return to the office full-time at the start of his second term.

The department will begin its review with reasonable accommodation agreements approved on or before September 30, 2025. Accommodations approved in fiscal 2026 or later “will be reviewed on a separate schedule announced at a later date.”

According to the email, OASAM will establish standardized criteria and procedures for “annual recertification reviews” later this fiscal year.

“This review will provide DOL with a more complete and accurate record of existing accommodation agreements and strengthen the Department's ability to consistently document, administer, and track accommodations,” the email states.

Employees may be asked to provide updated medical information “confirming their continued need for the accommodation.” Supervisors may also be asked to provide information about an employee’s essential job functions and how accommodations are being implemented.

The Labor Department said current accommodations will remain in effect while the review is underway, unless employees are “individually notified otherwise.”

Linnet Griffiths, a former senior advisor to the chief operating officer at the Centers for Disease Control Prevention and equal employment opportunity director at CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services, said she has “never seen this practice” for someone already approved for a permanent RA.

“There are sometimes temporary or limited RAs that require renewal, but that is stipulated on the approval of the original RA,” Griffiths said.

Jodi Hershey, a former reasonable accommodation specialist at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the founder of the workplace accommodation firm EASE, LLC, said “checking in on whether an accommodation is still working is good practice,” but that requiring every employee with a reasonable accommodation to recertify “is not how this has traditionally worked.”

Hershey said these new annual recertifications are “quickly becoming the pattern” across several federal agencies.

In their updated guidance, OPM and EEOC wrote that agencies are not required under the Rehabilitation Act to continue all previously granted telework accommodations, and that “an employee is not necessarily entitled to their preferred accommodation in perpetuity.”

They wrote that after an accommodation has been granted, agencies are allowed to “assess whether there continues to be a need for reasonable accommodation based on individualized circumstances [including] whether alternative accommodations might meet those needs.”

“An agency may therefore reevaluate a previously granted telework accommodation and replace it with an effective alternative reasonable accommodation,” they wrote.

The guidance states that agencies may replace a previously granted recurring or full-time telework accommodation with a “reasonable and effective in-office option,” such as alternative work schedules or specialized equipment.

OPM and EEOC cautioned that agencies “should not take a blanket approach to rescind and deny all recurring or full-time telework accommodations.”

Hershey said that DOL’s review “reaches every accommodation, for disabilities and pregnancy-related conditions alike, every year, which goes well beyond" what OPM and EEOC outlined in their guidance.

The Labor Department’s email states that it notified employees in February 2025 that it “intended to review and recertify previously approved reasonable accommodations.”

This annual review of reasonable accommodations is likely to add more strain to the department’s human resources workforce, which has already been spread thin by staff reductions.

Labor Department employees told Government Executive last month that the agency is facing a backlog of hundreds of reasonable accommodation requests, and that they have waited months or longer for the agency to address their cases. A bipartisan group of lawmakers recently expressed concerns about the department's backlog.

Government Executive first reported in August that the Labor Department is turning to artificial intelligence tools to triage new reasonable accommodation requests.

“I'd be curious how DOL plans to do individualized re-reviews without slowing decisions for the people still waiting on an answer to their original request,” Hershey said.

Meanwhile, the department announced this summer that sensitive personal and medical information for more than 3,000 employees seeking RAs was improperly shared to someone’s personal email account.

Hershey said many employees should consider submitting updating medical documentation, even if it isn’t required right now.

“Medical documentation is the crux of a telework accommodation, and the documentation that got telework approved a few years ago may very well not hold up now,” she said. “Agencies are starting from the position that the answer is anything but telework, and backing into the decision from there.”

Hershey said medical documentation that holds up to this new level of scrutiny does three things: clearly identifies an employee's limitations and ties each one to their job; explains what traveling to and being present at a worksite does to an employee's ability to work, and what working from home makes possible; and addresses in-office alternatives an agency is likely to offer, and whether those alternatives will be effective.

“None of this is easy. Updating documentation takes appointments, time, and money, and that burden falls on people who are already managing a health condition. And the uncertainty is its own harm," she said. "When people are told the support that lets them do their job is up for review, the stress affects their health long before any decision is made.”

]]>

Fraud-prevention work stalled at USDA amid staffing cuts and funding disputes

Eli Hager , ProPublica — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 17:23:25 -0400

It wasn’t the kind of call a grocery store gets every day. A customer with a thick Eastern European accent was on the phone saying he wanted to buy several thousand cans of Red Bull. Could the store have them in stock in a few days? Also, did they have equipment to move all those stacks of energy drinks into the parking lot, where two minivans would be waiting?

When the day came, Oct. 19, 2022, employees at the Smart & Final store in San Diego sold 3,960 cans of Red Bull and 720 of Monster Energy to two men and two women, all with the same accent, and helped them wheel the pallets out back. To pay for it all — the bill came to $10,747.05 — the group pulled out piles of plastic. These weren’t credit or debit cards; they looked more like hotel-room keys. There were 25 cards in all, each with a different amount loaded onto it, and the four people took turns swiping one after another. Then, the payment complete, they drove off.

In the days that followed, people as far away as New York and Florida made panicked calls to the store. They wanted to know why their food-stamp accounts (containing their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits) had been drained at this seemingly random location in San Diego.

It would turn out that what became known as the Red Bull Crew had gotten ahold of their SNAP data and used the funds to buy the energy drinks, which they then sold online or to smaller stores. It was hardly an isolated event. From September through November of that year, the same crew, part of a criminal syndicate based in Romania, bought at least $305,274.52 in energy drinks, using SNAP account information and PINs stolen from at least 174 victims nationwide, according to court documents and federal investigators.

To hear the Trump administration tell it, the SNAP program is under siege by well-heeled recipients of food stamps. Vice President JD Vance, upon being named “Fraud Czar” this spring, said: “There are people who have Lamborghinis who currently receive SNAP benefits.” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, whose agency oversees the program, regularly goes on TV and social media to allege that masses of SNAP recipients are scamming the system, driving Bentleys, Ferraris, Maseratis and, yes, Lamborghinis.

The federal government’s own statistics tell a different story. Confirmed cases of intentional program violations — fraud — committed by SNAP recipients account for $64 million a year, or about 0.08% of all benefits issued annually, according to the most recent 50-state reports compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Meanwhile a far bigger fraud wave has exploded over the past five years: organized theft from SNAP recipients. In 2025, $470 million was stolen electronically from beneficiaries — and thus from the U.S. taxpayer — according to data supplied to ProPublica by Propel, a company that provides a mobile app for SNAP recipients to check their account balances and transaction histories. More than 990,000 households that received food assistance last year had benefits stolen. (The reason it’s necessary to use data from a private company: The federal government has stopped tracking rates of this crime.)

ProPublica interviewed nearly 100 victims of SNAP theft, federal prosecutors, Secret Service agents, USDA officials, caseworkers and other experts to understand what’s behind this phenomenon and why more isn’t being done to stop it. The victims are almost all working people with families, or retirees, who have struggled to afford groceries in the current economy. Most didn’t learn about the crime until they were in a checkout line, only to have their benefit card declined.

Upon reporting the disappearance of their food assistance, victims are informed that nothing can be done under current federal law. “The only thing they said was that [my benefits] cannot be refunded unless they were lost due to a natural disaster,” said one SNAP theft victim in Ohio. “They told me they’d add my name to the list,” said another in rural Oregon. “They advised if I feel the place is sketchy, don’t run my card there,” a victim in Philadelphia said. Still another, in Virginia, added, “They even charged me $2 for a replacement card.”

Perhaps the most vexing aspect of all: The federal government knows how to prevent the vast majority of this crime in a single step. Congress just hasn’t been willing to take it.

SNAP theft is an old scheme applied to a new target. For years, scammers would surreptitiously install skimming devices on card readers at ATMs, gas pumps and corner stores. These devices could read the data on people’s cards as they swiped — while a pinhole camera or overlay keypad captured their PINs — all of which could be picked up later or sent via Bluetooth to someone sitting in a nearby cafe or parking lot. This pilfered data, in turn, was used to make online purchases, or it was loaded onto cloned cards to withdraw cash.

Skimming became exponentially more difficult when credit and debit card companies installed digital microchips in the 2010s and then introduced tap-to-pay. But one kind of card did not get the new chips: Electronic Benefits Transfer, or EBT, cards, which people use to access SNAP and other public assistance. These still rely on the 1960s-era magnetic-stripe technology that skimmers can easily read.

EBT cards are not a particularly high-value target compared with bank cards. (The average monthly SNAP benefit is about $350 per household.) But funding boosts to SNAP during the pandemic temporarily increased benefit amounts, and profits could be considerable if you skimmed hundreds of people’s card information every month. Skimming teams, often run by Romanian gangs, pivoted. With cloned magnetic-stripe cards, they started buying up huge quantities of SNAP-eligible products like energy drinks and baby formula that are easy to store and resell.

“We’ve started many, many briefings saying that one of the biggest ways we’re going to fight this is to just get chips in the cards,” said Michael Peck, assistant special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Criminal Investigative Division. Among the Secret Service’s lesser-known functions is investigating many financial crimes, and Peck leads its efforts against benefit theft. He said he and his team have delivered this message on Capitol Hill both at committee meetings and to individual members of Congress.

Yet congressional leadership has continually blocked legislation that would fund chip EBT cards nationally, despite universal support for the measure among Democrats and significant support among the Republican rank and file. For instance, House Committee on Agriculture Chairman Glenn Thompson, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said at a hearing in March that chip technology is “very effective.” But he shut down a bipartisan proposal to upgrade EBT cards with chips, citing unspecified budgetary constraints. (“Chairman Thompson is supportive of finding a fiscally responsible path forward for implementing policy that supports chip cards,” a committee aide said in a statement on his behalf. She added that “there was an appetite” for this reform among Republicans, but that Democrats weren’t willing to “find the budgetary offsets” for it.)

The Congressional Budget Office has yet to formally score the proposal, but multiple Hill staffers said they were told the total cost would be in the range of $215 million, as compared to the $600 million-plus annual loss on theft of SNAP and other benefits.

The main thing Congress has done about SNAP theft is to abandon a previous effort to help victims. The federal government had, since late 2022, been replacing people’s stolen funds, just as banks are required to do if your debit card is hacked. As a result, 753,929 households were compensated.

In December 2024, a bipartisan spending agreement that included a provision to extend these reimbursements through 2028 was on the brink of becoming law. But Elon Musk, who had been named a leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency, attacked the legislation more than 100 times on X, pushing to “defund everything.” (Musk did not reply to a request for comment.) Trump then sank the deal. Victims of SNAP theft can no longer get any of their benefits replaced. And with the government off the hook for losses, there is now less incentive to put money into the solution.

In the 22 months since, the Trump administration has gone on to strip funds for addressing EBT theft from the USDA’s annual budget requests to Congress, while cutting at least 650 of the staff of the federal Food and Nutrition Administration, the subagency that oversees SNAP. More than half of the technical experts whom the agency had hired to help it develop EBT card security guidance have been pushed out, according to the Government Accountability Office.

“Many of us who were working on fraud, we’ve left the federal government entirely,” said Kym Ayodeji, who had been a data scientist in the SNAP program until she departed this spring. (FNA, the agency she worked for, is also responsible for tracking fraud committed by retailers, which is far more prevalent than that committed by beneficiaries.) Ayodeji said she and her colleagues had been working on ways to identify retailers where unusually large quantities of certain items had been purchased and addresses where purchases made with many different EBT cards were being delivered. Some of this work was indefinitely delayed by firings, early retirements, agency reorganizations and government shutdowns, she said.

SNAP is federally funded and supervised. Congress and the USDA traditionally mandate, and pay much of the costs for, major changes to the system, especially involving technical coordination between states. States evaluate applicants and administer the accounts of those who are approved.

That said, states are allowed to adopt chip cards on their own. California has nearly completed the transition, and Alabama and Oklahoma began rolling out new cards this year. A handful of others initiated the process in recent months — before the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, starting Oct. 1, cut 50% of states’ administrative funding for SNAP, which Alabama and the others had tapped to transition to chip technology.

The rest — about 40 states — have likely missed their window, unless Congress acts. They’re also waiting for regulatory guidance on EBT card security and chip card implementation that the USDA has been claiming for nearly four years it is planning to publish. (The USDA Office of Inspector General has found that the agency’s failure to issue this has allowed the theft of at least $555 million in SNAP benefits.)

State-level SNAP administrators have also been overwhelmed with the hundreds of new requirements that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has saddled them with. For one, the law mandates that states adopt intensive new work requirements for older adults and others, resulting in voluminous additional monthly paperwork. And federal funds will be slashed even further next year if states don’t scramble to reduce their “payment error rate,” a figure that measures unintentional over- and underpayments in SNAP benefits. With all of this to juggle, many state officials told ProPublica that they’ve put chip card implementation on hold in order to implement the Trump law — one of whose ostensible goals was to reduce fraud.

All the while, that law has cut food aid for more than 1.2 million children. The USDA’s Rollins has said that nearly 6 million people in total have been “moved off SNAP” during the current administration.

The White House declined to respond to a detailed list of questions. A USDA spokesperson, in an emailed statement, did not refute that Rollins has focused on individual SNAP recipient fraud rather than on EBT theft, but said that finding “cracks in public statements screams politics, not fact-finding.” The spokesperson also did not address ProPublica’s reporting showing that the agency has failed to deliver solutions on EBT theft specifically. Instead, the statement pointed to the agency’s work, in collaboration with the Department of Justice, combating retailer fraud. The USDA says it has cracked down on thousands of stores that were abusing their SNAP privileges.

Absent action from Congress or USDA leadership, it has largely been left to the Secret Service to apply an enforcement approach to what is arguably a policy problem. Agents first went after gangs like the Red Bull Crew, often by watching hours upon hours of grocery store surveillance footage. More recently, they’ve tried to get ahead of the scammers by heading to cities that have been hit by EBT theft attacks and then going store to store to check card readers for skimming devices. The agency has run more than 70 of these operations since April 2024, independent of any White House initiative.

Most of them are led by Peck, the assistant special agent in charge. With his form-fitting black polo tucked into cargo pants and a contoured beard, he has a flat affect even as he lists off colorful details like how the criminals sometimes ship dishwashers full of cash overseas. But he also emphasizes the vulnerability of the victims and wishes there was even more his team could do for them. “The U.S. has been fighting the War on Drugs and the War on Terror for how many years?” he said. “We are pushing hard and we’re doing all we can with the resources and abilities that we have.”

One bright morning in late June, dozens of law enforcement officers gathered in a Secret Service meeting room on the top floor of a downtown Brooklyn skyscraper, with a commanding view of the New York City skyline. In addition to unarmed Secret Service analysts in short-sleeved shirts inscribed with the field office they were joining from (Nashville, Miami, San Diego), there were agents from the USDA Office of Inspector General as well as a smattering of NYPD officers — who had guns, handcuffs and the jurisdiction to make arrests should anything go awry that day.

From a podium, Peck recapped how the multiday New York operation was going so far, including that the previous day, officers had happened upon two foreign nationals installing a skimming device, chased them down and made arrests. “Be safe, watch backs, stay fed,” he concluded.

Then everyone dispersed into teams of three or four. Each was given a list of dozens of stores in Brooklyn or Queens — disproportionately ethnic and dollar stores, but also some larger chains like 7-11 — that they were assigned to visit, based on data analytics showing where skimming activity was most probable.

The squad that ProPublica joined was headed to Midwood, in South Brooklyn, which is home to Orthodox Jews and immigrants from the Middle East, Central Asia and elsewhere. As we walked around the neighborhood with these federal agents, we got plenty of confused looks and some scared ones, too.

“Hello, we’re here with the Secret Service,” one of the analysts would say upon entering each store. Then they’d ask the store manager for permission to inspect each card reader. They also handed out flyers in four languages telling the cashiers what to look out for.

When they did find a skimming device, they donned gloves and masks to handle it. After prying it off the card reader, they bagged it and tagged it, to be sent in for DNA and fingerprint testing as well as digital forensic analysis. Maybe a lead could be extracted, a connection to a larger EBT theft ring.

These missions are clearly well-intentioned, and every skimmer removed saves families from being deprived of food. Yet, plainly, conducting store-to-store checks of card readers is inefficient. Over the course of two years, the agency has spent tens of thousands of staff hours checking 69,805 point-of-sale terminals at stores, 42,972 gas pumps and 10,661 ATMs. They’ve found 637 skimming devices. And as one agent told ProPublica, “There could be a new skimmer on there tomorrow.”

Ultimately, it just won’t be possible to arrest one’s way out of this crisis, both federal and state law enforcement officials acknowledged. Low-level runners keep arriving from Romania and elsewhere; even if they do get caught, they’re often able to bond out of jail because they’re only facing state charges for nonviolent offenses. Then they disappear.

Funding for chip EBT cards still faces dim prospects on Capitol Hill, according to Democratic and Republican lawmakers and staffers, even with newfound support from major retailer associations and big players like Walmart. There’s a chip card provision in the Senate’s draft version of this year’s Farm Bill, but the whole package is mired in a dispute between the parties — over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s cuts to SNAP funding — that looks like it will last until well after the midterm elections. This almost doesn’t matter, given that on the House side, the Farm Bill has already passed, and it contains no funding for chip cards.

And there’s been no movement on repeated bipartisan proposals from Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and others to renew the reimbursement program for families that have had their food assistance taken.

Certainly, the mass distribution of any new payment technology isn’t easy. California, Alabama and Oklahoma have had to phase in their new cards gradually, allowing customers to still use the card’s magnetic stripe if the chip isn’t working everywhere yet. And they’ve tried to notify rural convenience stores and gas stations, and help corner bodegas update their card readers, so that no one is left with only a chip card in a desert of stores that still just accept magnetic stripe.

But by doing all of this and employing additional data tools, California has reduced the theft of food and cash benefits by as much as 83% in just two years, the governor’s office said. And Alabama officials claim their state hasn’t had any confirmed EBT theft cases since they began to distribute chip cards this year.

Still, chip cards aren’t the entire solution and doubtlessly, scammers will find clever ways to get around this technology. Moreover, SNAP recipients have largely been denied the basic services that banks and credit card companies use to block likely fraudulent transactions in real time. (Think of the email or text alerts you get from your bank when suspicious purchases are attempted with your card information.)

If states were to try this without federal help, they would have to individually pay for the additional security features. Most have gone for cheaper options like advising or requiring SNAP recipients to change their PIN regularly and to lock their card when not using it. Both are useful stopgaps but require constant diligence.

State and county SNAP caseworkers said they’ve been deeply frustrated that ever since Trump and Musk killed the reimbursement program, all they can do for victims is suggest they change their PIN more often and maybe try reporting the crime to local law enforcement. “It is a short conversation,” said Norman Vogele, a caseworker in Oregon. The date of the crime and the missing amount is recorded. “It isn’t clear why we even do that much,” he said, “as there is zero recourse.”

The Red Bull Crew stayed on the run for over a year, using looted food benefits to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of bulk energy drinks in Oklahoma, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. After hundreds of hours of surveillance by the Secret Service, federal prosecutors and local authorities, all but one of the members were arrested and served sentences ranging from one to three years. They’ve all since been released, and some may have been deported.

Meanwhile, every day, SNAP theft sprees keep popping up in new corners of the country. A Secret Service official sounded gloomy about the pursuit of street-level operatives on its own, without policy change. “You can arrest them,” he said. “But essentially once you take them off the street, there’s 10 more that are doing the same thing.”

The first-person accounts have been edited for length and clarity.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.

Cassandra Garibay contributed reporting. Gabriel Sandoval contributed research.

]]>