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DOGE is about making government services easier to access, its head says

Natalie Alms — Thu, 21 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Department of Government Efficiency acting Administrator Amy Gleason says that efficiency — the tagline billionaire Elon Musk heralded during his involvement in the early days of DOGE — is about making accessing the government easier.

Although that message ties back to much of the history of the Obama-era office that President Donald Trump reshaped into DOGE, the U.S. Digital Service, it diverges somewhat from what DOGE has made itself known for, like dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, pressing for unprecedented, high-level access to sensitive government data and pushing thousands of government employees out of their jobs.

Musk and his allies also emphasized reducing government spending as part of their mission, although they were ultimately largely unsuccessful.

Gleason told an audience at a government IT industry event Wednesday that the group’s priorities today are improving government services, modernizing government systems, combating fraud and hiring tech talent after the administration pushed 20,000 technology-focused government employees out of their jobs last year.

“I think of efficiency really as reducing that friction, administrative burden, both from our public users as well as our federal workforce, and even state users that we're working with,” she said. “Our citizens have come to expect their government experience to feel like the private sector experience, where it's modern and easy to use.”

When Trump moved back into the White House last year, he quickly transformed USDS — set up in the wake of the botched healthcare.gov launch to prevent future such failures — into the U.S. DOGE Service.

Many of those on the existing team were laid off or resigned in protest. Some stayed and continued to work on the types of citizen-facing projects the Obama-era team was known for, although experts have told Nextgov/FCW that DOGE made these types of good-government projects more difficult by souring what the public thinks about when it hears the words “government modernization.”

Gleason herself was relatively unknown to the broader public when the White House named her acting administrator of DOGE last spring, after Trump evaded the question of who was in charge for weeks. She previously worked at DOGE’s precursor during Trump’s first term and during the Biden administration.

Despite her title, it’s not clear how much sway Gleason had over DOGE during its zenith. Some on Musk’s government-cutting team have since said that she never led a DOGE meeting they attended, and that they didn’t know what her job was.

DOGE’s social media still appears to be rooted in the Musk days. Recent posts on the team’s X account include images of a doberman on the White House lawn with the text, “DOGERMAN.” Another post simply reads, “America loves DOGE.”

Public polling from last year says otherwise, with more Americans opposing DOGE than rating it positively.

Gleason, who also works at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, spoke Wednesday about her inspiration working in the healthcare tech space because of the experience of her daughter, who was diagnosed with a rare disease when she was 11. Gleason said she wants to improve the access patients have to their own healthcare data.

Asked to expound on the biggest challenges in government AI, Gleason said that trust is the “biggest thing.”

“We have to figure out how to overcome the trust barrier,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Survey: Feds were less engaged, less satisfied and more burnt out in 2025

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 20 May 2026 15:29:29 -0400

Federal employee morale dropped last year, as President Donald Trump downsized and otherwise overhauled the civil service, according to a new data analysis from Gallup.

“[A]fter the reforms took effect, federal workers experienced declines in employee engagement and job satisfaction, alongside increases in burnout and job-search activity,” the researchers wrote. “These shifts were larger than those observed among comparable state and local government workers — and private sector counterparts — during the same period.”

The analytics firm noted, however, that the data shows there was a “rebound” in some areas by the end of 2025.

For the analysis, researchers compared federal employee worker engagement metrics with those of state and local civil servants. Between 2022 and 2024, the two groups exhibited similar worker satisfaction score trends.

“By comparing the change in federal employees to the change in state and local employees — rather than looking at federal trends alone — the analysis isolates the portion of the shift that occurred uniquely among federal workers after the reforms,” the researchers explained.

In the second quarter of 2025, the percentage of “engaged” federal employees decreased by six points more than it did for state and local workers. That gap narrowed to a four-point difference by the first quarter of 2026.

Likewise, feds were roughly 15 points less likely than their state and local counterparts to report having “high job satisfaction” in the second quarter of 2025. The difference between the two groups never went below 10 points for the remainder of the year.

Between the second and fourth quarter of 2025, feds went from being about eight to nine points more likely to report “high burnout” compared with state and local workers to approximately four to six points.

Feds were also around eight points more likely to be searching for a new job in the first quarter of 2025 than state and local civil servants, but “federal job-search behavior [by Q4 2025] was essentially indistinguishable from state and local peers and remained so in Q1 2026.”

For this analysis, Gallup researchers looked at data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the company’s ongoing workforce survey data of U.S. adults. The statistical models were controlled for characteristics like age, gender and race.

In March, Gallup reported that the percentage of feds who are classified as “thriving” decreased by 10 points between 2024 and 2025.

The Office of Personnel Management in 2025 did not conduct the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, with officials saying that changes were necessary to the annual poll of the government workforce in order to comply with Trump’s anti-diversity executive orders.

In response, the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan good government group, developed its own survey of more than 10,000 current feds. It found that all 30 agencies represented in the poll experienced decreases from their 2024 FEVS scores; although, Partnership officials acknowledged that the results are not directly comparable because OPM’s survey includes significantly more respondents.

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Reported exposure of federal cybersecurity agency login data prompts Hill scrutiny

David DiMolfetta — Wed, 20 May 2026 15:25:50 -0400

Top Democratic lawmakers on the House Homeland Security Committee have requested a briefing from Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency acting Director Nick Andersen following reports of a contractor-linked leak of internal agency credentials.

Independent journalist Brian Krebs reported Monday that researchers identified a publicly accessible GitHub repository connected to government contractor Nightwing that allegedly exposed a broad collection of sensitive access information tied to systems used by CISA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.

“We demand a briefing as soon as possible on how this serious security lapse occurred, any potential security consequences, remediation activities, corrective actions related to the contractor personnel involved, and efforts to monitor for and prevent similar activity from occurring in the future,” wrote Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the committee’s ranking member, and Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois, the ranking member of the panel’s cyber subcommittee, in a Tuesday letter shared with Nextgov/FCW.

The materials, stored in a repository labeled “Private CISA,” reportedly included items like authentication credentials, AWS GovCloud information and other sensitive data. The repository was later removed from public view. Nextgov/FCW has not independently verified its contents.

“Security researchers said the content openly available online included information on ‘how CISA builds, tests and deploys software internally,’ and they described it as ‘one of the most egregious government data leaks in recent history.’ We agree,” said the letter, referring to the contents of Krebs' reporting.

A Nightwing spokesperson referred inquiries to CISA.

“We do not comment on congressional correspondence but respond to members directly,” an agency spokesperson said.

A separate letter to Andersen was sent by Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., Axios reported Tuesday.

CISA has undergone significant workforce cuts in the last year, which Thompson and Ramirez say may have contributed to the incident. They worry that “a substantially reduced workforce, coupled with the administration’s indifference to security, created the conditions that allowed such a significant security lapse to occur. Moreover, we are concerned that the incident undermines CISA’s credibility.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to include a comment from CISA.

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EPA’s restructuring could change who shapes chemical risk decisions

H. Christopher Frey, The Conversation — Wed, 20 May 2026 15:13:44 -0400

For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has relied on an independent scientific program to answer two basic questions when chemicals come up for review: Does the chemical pose a threat to human health? If so, how much exposure is necessary before it becomes a problem?

The scientists involved in that program, known as the Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, served as neutral scientific referees.

Now, the Trump administration is dismantling the program and moving the scientific assessment role to policy offices, opening the door for political pressure. The administration is also making it easier for past IRIS assessments to be revisited or overturned.

This change is not merely bureaucratic: It reshapes whether future assessments of chemical dangers will be ignored, delayed by time-consuming legal fights or understated by the federal government, potentially with real consequences for public health.

Numerous chemicals are hazardous to human health. For example, ethylene oxide is used to sterilize medical equipment. However, studies show ethylene oxide poses elevated cancer risks to people who live near facilities that release it. Chromium-VI, used as a corrosion inhibitor and for metal finishing, can contaminate drinking water. Made famous by the Erin Brockovich case, it has been linked to cancer and other adverse health effects. Formaldehyde, found in building materials and household products, has long raised concerns about cancer and respiratory disease.

EPA scientists assessed each of these chemicals through the IRIS program. Now, the IRIS program itself, as well as many of its formal assessments of more than 550 chemicals developed over four decades, is being challenged under the Trump administration.

What IRIS did – and what it didn’t do

In any high-stakes game, the referee enforces the rules so the outcome rests on the facts, not on who shouts the loudest or has the most at stake.

IRIS played that role for chemical safety. It was part of the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, which was recently dismantled by the Trump administration. Its scientists assessed whether chemicals cause harm and weighed how health risks changed with a person’s increasing exposure to the chemical. These scientists did not estimate real-world exposures, decide acceptable risk or make regulatory choices. Those functions were handled in policy offices.

I have worked with IRIS assessments from multiple perspectives – as a professor of environmental engineering, as a reviewer for the National Academies and EPA science advisory processes, and as assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Research and Development from 2022 to 2024, where I oversaw the IRIS program.

IRIS assessments were written by EPA scientists and rigorously reviewed by independent external peer reviewers with experience in each specific chemical. The assessments have been used across EPA programs and by states, local governments and tribes, and internationally. Industry representatives, environmental groups, other federal agencies and members of the public all had opportunities to comment on the drafts of assessments before they were finalized.

When disagreements arose over IRIS assessments, independent scientific experts were asked to weigh the evidence and advise the EPA on how to move forward. That process, relying on scientists, not stakeholders, was meant to ensure that scientific judgments were grounded in evidence, not in policy preferences or financial interests.

The actual policy decisions to regulate chemicals were made elsewhere, by EPA officials and, in some cases, by states or other jurisdictions. IRIS provided the scientific foundation so those decisions could be informed by an evidence-based understanding of chemical hazards.

IRIS assessments effectively set the standard for assessing chemical hazards internationally. Other agencies and countries rely on IRIS assessments precisely because they are comprehensive, transparent and independently reviewed.

Why critics wanted IRIS dismantled

That track record matters.

Some industry-aligned organizations have argued that IRIS assessments are flawed or biased and have called for eliminating the program.

However, independent scientific reviews have repeatedly examined these concerns and found that IRIS methods reflect the current state of the science and have strengthened in rigor, transparency and consistency over time.

It’s true that IRIS assessments often took years to complete, but that was because extensive interagency review and limited staffing slowed the pace at which assessments could inform regulatory decisions. Delay is not the same as poor science.

What changes when the referee disappears?

With IRIS eliminated as an independent program, chemical hazard assessments will be overseen by regulatory offices that also weigh economic impacts, legal risk and policy priorities.

When scientific assessments are developed within offices responsible for policy decisions, it becomes harder to maintain a clear separation between evaluating evidence and weighing its regulatory consequences. That separation has historically helped ensure that scientific conclusions are grounded in evidence alone.

Courts generally give weight to agency expertise when decisions are supported by a clear and well-documented scientific record. However, when agencies fail to clearly explain how the evidence supports their decisions, including when agencies depart from their own scientific assessments, courts can block those decisions under the Administrative Procedure Act or other laws, such as the Clean Air Act.

The result can be prolonged litigation and delays in developing or implementing regulations, with consequences for public health.

How communities are affected

Industries have long challenged scientific findings that show their products can cause harm – from tobacco smoke to particulate air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.

When public health is at stake, I believe independent referees are essential to ensure that facts are determined by evidence, not by the industries that would benefit. Shifting away from independent scientific review risks undermining that foundation.

H. Christopher Frey, Professor of Environmental Engineering, North Carolina State University

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

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

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

Updated May 20 at 9:10 a.m.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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USDA is using AI, but doesn’t have the required controls to manage risks, watchdog finds

Natalie Alms — Tue, 19 May 2026 17:16:45 -0400

The Agriculture Department is using artificial intelligence to identify risks in the supply chain, estimate yearly corn and soybean yields and make recommendations during the permitting process.

But the department doesn’t have all of the required cybersecurity and governance controls to keep that technology in check, according to an inspector general report released last week, which found that Agriculture doesn’t even have a generative AI policy at all.

The department hasn’t fully implemented cyber and risk controls in its AI systems, as required by federal standards, because it has prioritized using AI over setting up controls for the technology. The Trump administration has sought to aggressively roll out AI across the government, in addition to efforts to dominate with the technology on the world stage.

At USDA, AI systems “could be vulnerable and lack critical security controls, leaving the agency susceptible to data breaches or reputational harm” because of the lack of strong governance around the technology, the new report says.

Agriculture hasn’t followed all the risk management and governance controls set in place by the Office of Management and Budget during the Biden administration and modified by the Trump administration. The department has installed a chief AI officer as required, but it hasn’t updated agency policies — or implemented minimum risk management practices for AI systems deemed especially risky, like those that affect civil rights or critical infrastructure.

Almost none of the AI use cases in the department’s fiscal year 2024 inventory had an authority to operate, a formal approval issued for technology systems meant to make sure that the government thinks through the risks associated with different technologies before using them.

That means that management doesn’t have assurance that the department has cybersecurity controls in place, the report says.

The inventory itself may also be insufficient to account for all potential dangers, as the OIG said the department is at risk of shadow AI — technology used by employees that management isn’t aware of or hasn’t approved — creeping across the department, since it relies only on an annual data call for employees to self-report AI that they use.

The watchdog included several recommendations for the department to implement controls and update policies, all of which Agriculture agreed with.

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Newest inspector general nominees show shift from overtly political backgrounds

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 19 May 2026 16:55:04 -0400

On one of the first days of his second term, Donald Trump fired 17 agency inspectors general. And most of the president’s picks who have been confirmed to lead the watchdog offices previously worked in his first or second administration, raising concerns from good government groups about their ability to perform independent oversight of federal programs.

Trump’s latest IG nominees, however, generally have experience working in an IG office and appear to be more typical picks for the nonpartisan watchdog role.

Justice Department

Trump nominated Don Berthiaume, a career IG employee, to lead the DOJ IG office, where he is currently serving as a senior advisor.

The president tapped Berthiaume as the acting IG at DOJ from October 2025 through January 2026, but his tenure was cut short by rules that limit how long an individual can serve in an acting position.

Specifically, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act generally restricts officials from filling a role in an acting capacity to no more than 210 days after a vacancy occurs. The position at DOJ opened up in June 2025 when former DOJ IG Michael Horowitz left to become the IG for the Federal Reserve.

The deputy DOJ IG, William Blier, is currently performing the duties of the IG.

If confirmed, Berthiaume will face several politically sensitive challenges. Lawyers for a DOJ whistleblower in March accused the IG office of not investigating multiple misconduct allegations. And the DOJ watchdog in April announced that it would audit the department’s compliance with the law mandating the release of government files related to the deceased sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.

But Mark Lee Greenblatt — former Interior Department IG who was fired by Trump and who has been critical of the president’s IG selections — praised Berthiaume’s nomination.

“In my experience of working literally next to [Berthiaume] for years on very sensitive political cases, he showed to me that he is a straight shooter,” Greenblatt said. “When compared with some of the IG nominees that President Trump has put forward in other significant positions, this [nomination] is — from my perspective — a home run.”

Education Department

Like Berthiaume, Trump’s pick to serve as Education IG — Heidi Semann — comes from the IG community and had a stint as acting IG.

The president in July 2025 replaced acting Education IG René Rocque, who is also the office’s deputy, with Semann. The swap came after Rocque notified Congress that investigators had “experienced unreasonable denials and repeated delays” from the department during an investigation into the administration’s workforce reductions.

In December 2025, however, Semann’s tenure as acting IG ended, and she returned to her position as a senior special agent at the Federal Reserve OIG. A spokesperson for the Education OIG confirmed to Government Executive that this was due to time limits on acting officials in the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.

Mark Priebe, who replaced Semann as acting and is still in the position, was a senior official in the Education OIG who appears to have shared social media posts supporting Trump.

Similarly, Greenblatt argued that Semann, given her oversight experience, is a “marked improvement” from Trump’s past IG nominees. But he still has some concerns.

“She seems to be having this meteoric rise from obscurity to an incredibly important sensitive role, so I think that does raise a question in my mind,” he said. “But since she’s coming from the OIG community, and with an oversight background, then hopefully she is coming to this position with that fair, objective and independent mindset.”

Housing and Urban Development Department

At the end of April, Trump nominated Jeffrey Ledbetter of Virginia to be IG at HUD. Neither the White House, the HUD OIG or Republicans or Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, where his nomination has been referred, responded to a request to confirm who Ledbetter is or otherwise provide biographical information.

The president had selected Jeremy Ellis, who has more than two decades of investigative experience, as his HUD IG nominee, but that nomination was withdrawn in September 2025.

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'Your 30 days has become 30 hours’: AI is reshaping federal cyber defense

Frank Konkel — Tue, 19 May 2026 13:09:48 -0400

Advanced AI models with unique hacking capabilities like Anthropic’s Mythos should bring federal agencies that handle some of the government’s most sensitive information to a “reflection point,” according to one of the CIA’s top tech officials.

“I think it is a reflection point and I think people need to view it in that fashion,” said Dan Richard, Associate Deputy Director of the CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate. Richard spoke on a panel Friday at the Qualys ROCon Public Sector 2026 conference in Tysons Corner, Virginia.

A previous version of the Mythos software was released to a limited group of tech companies in April with much fanfare, due to its ability to detect countless software bugs and defects.

Security researchers and experts reacted with a mix of excitement and caution, with some warning the software could usher in a new era for hackers and lower the barrier to entry for would-be attackers. Mythos and competing models like OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 have forced executive agencies to grapple with their capabilities and prompted emergency briefings for lawmakers.

Richard said he feels “bullish in terms of the opportunities that are out there,” largely because these AI models can help agencies like the CIA deal with the deluge of data they generate and automate responses to potential threats. He likened the current Mythos-driven moment to Ukraine’s response to Russia’s invasion in 2022.

“[Ukraine] had gone through a decade of the Russians infiltrating their networks and having to deal with that implication, but when the Russians attacked in 2022 the Ukrainians were prepared because they understood they couldn’t do it themselves,” he said. “Shoulder-to-shoulder with them were the private sector vendors to support what they were doing and to help what they’re doing.”

Richard said the U.S. government is in the “same position” now, and public-private partnerships will be key to ensuring the nation gets it right.

“80% of our nation’s critical infrastructure is in private sector hands, so there is no solution that does not include private sector partners,” Richard said. “We talk about partnership all the time, but this is really different. This isn’t transactional. This is us, as a country, figuring out with the academic community, with the private sector community and with our public sector partners working together to be able to defeat and take advantage of what I see as an optimal opportunity for the agency, but for the country.”

Joe Kelly, division director of the Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security at the University of Maryland, said advanced AI models are going to lower the barrier to entry for would-be hackers.

“The real danger when we look at something like Mythos — whether you believe the hype or not — is it certainly creates what we already see with Claude Code, the ability for script kiddies to cause real damage even without knowing what they’re doing,” Kelly said. “It’s going to lift all those. I do worry about the complexity that we’re entering in this era.”

‘It’s moving so fast, it’s scary’

IonQ Chief Information Officer Katie Arrington, who spent most of 2025 serving as the Pentagon’s chief information officer, said the influx of advanced AI tools — and the speed at which they’re emerging — will test government to the extreme. Existing governance requires IT security vulnerabilities be patched within 30 days, and 15 days for vulnerabilities designated “critical.”

“You don’t have time like that anymore,” Arrington said during a panel at the Qualys event. “We’re talking about a tool that can find every vulnerability in seconds on a platform.”

Arrington said these kinds of advanced AI models weren’t a discussion item even 12 months ago. At that time, the Pentagon was just trying to improve the speed that it could bring general AI tools into its networks.

“It’s moving so fast, it’s scary,” Arrington said. “It scares me and it excites me how fast Mythos came alive.”

Qualys CEO Sumedh Thakar said federal agencies may need to take a more proactive — rather than reactive — approach to risk management to deal with the growing range of threats from advanced AI tools. His company is using its AI-powered cybersecurity tools, including TotalCloud, which recently received authorization to operate in the government’s FedRAMP High environments, to allow customers to automate vulnerability patching, reducing some of the manual processes and “dashboard tourism” cyber professionals otherwise deal with.

Thakar said autonomous remediation allows savvy customers to “battle AI with the speed of AI.”

“Now with attackers leveraging AI, as soon as a patch comes out, they can reverse engineer the patch and they can start to figure out the exploit. Your 30 days has become 30 hours, or three hours,” Thakar said. “What we really focus on is to get over the fear of autonomous remediation. It’s not an option.”

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The century-old GS system is 'disintegrating' and government can't agree on how to fix it

Howard Risher — Tue, 19 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Both Republicans and Democrats see it as a barrier to better government but for totally different reasons. It is central to the “compliance culture” that impedes better government. It still reflects the way work and workers were managed a century ago. It has not been modified, except for separating the Senior Executive Service and adding locality pay, since it was created in 1923.

It’s more than ironic that in that era the head of the Bureau of Efficiency was prominent in the administration of the civil service system. The buzzword then was “scientific management.” Workers were expected to do what they were told, and managed as a cost. That is still true in smaller, owner-managed companies.

Not surprisingly, Elon Musk is known for top-down control. Quotes attributed to him confirm a very negative view of the federal government: “Regulations are immortal.” “The bureaucracy is the problem.” Musk and his chainsaw created an us-vs-them distrust of management. The workforce was “traumatized,” to quote Max Stier, of the Partnership for Public Service.

Now, the government is moving full-steam ahead with AI. It also threatens job security. What has not been addressed is that jobs will be changing rapidly and that is at odds with job classification. A year or two from now the GS system is likely to be unsupportable. AI is exacerbating the already poor employee morale.

Employee costs are not the problem

By any standard, the costs attributed to building a productive workforce are a small percentage – less than 5% – of what the government spends. The cost to raise GS salaries to market rates would be less than 1%.

A related point highlights the political problem. No administration has been concerned with how much federal contractors pay their people. Added to that are the organizations receiving federal grants. Those organizations are not expected to defend how much they pay their staff. That’s true of the Federal Reserve System and the many independent agencies.

There is an alternative management philosophy. That is employees should be managed not as costs but as valued assets. That emerged in the 1990s. It started a few years earlier with W. Edwards Deming’s book, Out of the Crisis, where he argued the problem was not workers, it was the system they work in. Over the decade Gallup first cited research showing engaged workers are more productive. Fortune's “Great Places to Work” lists first appeared. And research confirmed employees are managed differently in “High Performance Organizations.” Those companies have been high on lists of the best performers.

It’s not coincidental that in the 1990s the Clinton-Gore National Performance Review (NPR) confirmed “empowered” federal workers are fully capable of significantly better performance. That initiative resulted in the deletion of over 350,000 jobs and savings in excess of a billion. In that context employees were committed to improving operations.

But just before President Bush took office, the Heritage Foundation released the report, “Taking Charge of Federal Personnel.” It influenced the new administration to centralize management with OMB, returning day-to-day operational control to appointees. That effectively ended the brief recognition that employees are ready to play a role in improving performance.

The Government Accountability Office, then led by David Walker, initiated reform in the late 1990s when budget cuts and staffing reductions forced a strategic restructuring. Walker is known to be a conservative but his reforms emphasized employee empowerment and deep employee involvement in the planning. GAO has been at or close to the top of the Partnerships’ Best Places to Work in the Federal Government Rankings for mid-size agencies since the list was created.

Strategic human capital management has been consistently on GAO’s High Risk list since 2001.

The Pay Agent’s Recommendations for the GS Framework

In December, the Pay Agent’s “Annual Report” stated it would not “approve of further additions to existing locality pay area boundaries or the creation of new locality pay areas at this time.” It was not like prior federal reports in that it was highly critical of the “antiquated” GS system. From the report:

The locality areas “do not align with geographic realities or labor market conditions.”
“It makes no sense to continue expanding locality pay boundaries – or to tinker with the arcane methodology ... given the need for a better pay system.”
“ ... a methodology that produces implausible results while ignoring occupational realties, mission needs, and performance considerations.”

It went on to state, “It has long been clear what the locality pay system’s flaws are” and referred to the 2002 Office of Personnel Management (OPM) white paper, “A Fresh Start for Federal Pay: The Case for Modernization.” The authors contended the GS system “hinders the performance of the Federal Government.”

As the director of the project in 1990 that led to the Federal Employee Pay Comparability Act, I agree with their critique. It was passed as a rider, and there were too many compromises. The Bureau of Labor Statistics radically changed its survey methodology soon after passage. Over the years BLS has made additional changes. Today it’s so complex it’s doubtful anyone at OPM or involved with the Federal Salary Council meetings could describe the analytic methodology. It is completely different from anything used in other sectors and far more costly.

The Pay Agent’s report briefly discussed three recommendations “for improving the General Schedule:”

“Assess the total compensation gap.” This is not a new idea. It has been the focus of several Congressional Budget Office reports arguing the cost of government provided benefits offsets the lower salaries. The flaw in that argument is clear in the BLS statistics. Smaller companies provide fewer benefits and their numbers distort any comparison with government’s true talent competitors. Moreover, BLS does not include cash incentive income or stock related income. It would have to be an “apples-to-apples” comparison to be meaningful.
“Provide different pay ranges for different occupations.” This could be a practical answer for high demand occupations. Obviously, the Federal Wage System is based on this argument. It’s also the rationale for the Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) pay system. And from the recommendations in our 1990 locality pay report, the Department of Veterans Affairs was successful three years later in establishing a separate pay policy under Title 38 for physicians, dentists, nurses and several other medical care specialists. It is the answer for high demand occupations.
“Eliminate GS steps and create an open range” to shift to pay for performance. While this has been highly controversial, there is a list of pay demos and independent pay systems with successful pay for performance systems. The state of Tennessee transitioned successfully in the years before COVID to a performance based pay policy. The state is a model for how to make the transition. A core point is that this is culture change. Tennessee invested three years in manager training and practice before actually changing the pay policy. Federal managers and employees are far from ready today.

The Pay Agent report is accurate – the GS system is “a legacy framework from the 1950s.” “It is disintegrating.” The government needs to provide better services. The public’s support continues to decline.

The 2020 Rand report, “Federal Civilian Workforce Hiring, Recruitment, and Related Compensation Practices for the Twenty-First Century,” evaluated the many successful initiatives to develop “modern” pay systems. A common thread is that employees were involved in the planning and implementation. The most notable failure was the roll out of the National Security Personnel System (NSPS) covering 226,000 Defense Department employees. It initially had employee support but they were not involved and after three years the system was terminated.

Employees want their organization to be seen as a success, and as the Clinton-Gore NPR made clear, they understand the problems better than outside experts and want to be involved in improving performance.

There have been repeated recommendations to replace the GS system. It will be a substantial undertaking, far more complicated than the study leading to FEPCA. However, the history here and in other countries suggests it is necessary to improve government performance.

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ICE agent faces assault charges in Minneapolis case raising questions about federal-local law enforcement coordination

Alyssa Chen, Minnesota Reformer — Mon, 18 May 2026 17:38:38 -0400

Minnesota prosecutors charged Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Christian J. Castro, 52, on Monday with assault for the alleged Jan. 14 shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis in north Minneapolis.

The ICE agent, identified for the first time publicly on Monday, faces four counts of second-degree assault as well as one count of falsely reporting a crime.

The latter charge stems from Castro’s earlier accusation that Sosa-Celis and the subject of the agents’ car chase, Alfredo Aljorna, both Venezuelan immigrants here legally according to state prosecutors, had assaulted him with a broom and a snow shovel before Castro opened fire.

The Justice Department dropped its assault charges against Sosa-Celis and Aljorna after federal prosecutors belatedly reviewed surveillance camera footage that contradicted the accounts of Castro and a second ICE agent. In a rare move, the ICE acting director said the agents appeared to have made “false statements.”

“A violent crime did occur that night, but it was Mr. Castro who committed it. He shot through the door of a home with many people, including children, inside while fortunately missing several others,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a Monday press conference.

Moriarty’s office has issued a nationwide warrant for Castro’s arrest. Moriarty said they do not know where Castro is, but there are “mechanisms out there to find him.” She added that she feels “pretty confident that we will get him in here to start this process.”

The case is currently in state court, though Moriarty said her office expects Castro’s defense to try to move the case to federal court, after which he can assert immunity under what is known as the Supremacy Clause, which protects federal agents for reasonably carrying out their duties. If Castro were convicted, she noted, he would be ineligible for a presidential pardon.

Both Moriarty and Attorney General Keith Ellison, who is partnering with the county, emphasized that “there’s no such thing as complete immunity.” Ellison also noted there is a “long line of cases” in which state prosecutors have charged federal agents for breaking state law, a practice that stretches back to the 1800s and has had mixed results.

Castro was identified mainly through the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Moriarty said. Investigators arrived at the scene on Jan. 14 and heard FBI agents identify him. She added that her office received no cooperation from the federal government in obtaining evidence.

In Castro’s original statement to the FBI, he claimed Sosa-Celis and Aljorna repeatedly struck him with a broom and a snow shovel. He said he then drew his gun and “simultaneously fired” a round as they were running toward their home. Sosa-Celis and Aljorna have maintained that they never attacked Castro and that Castro shot Sosa-Celis in the leg through the front door.

The arrest warrant filed by prosecutors, based on an investigation by the BCA and citing surveillance camera footage, aligns with Sosa-Celis and Aljorna’s accounts that Castro fired at the front door of the house. It includes a description of holes from the bullet’s trajectory through the front door, a foyer wall, a closet and the wall of a child’s bedroom.

The shooting was the second of three injurious shootings in Minneapolis during the federal immigration surge this winter, occurring between the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The Jan. 14 case, which drew more than 100 protesters to the scene, was initially shrouded in mystery compared with the other two shootings, since there was no video evidence of the altercation before the city of Minneapolis released surveillance footage in April.

The federal government has corrected its own account multiple times, including its initial press release that incorrectly identified Sosa-Celis as the driver of the car and a subject of a “targeted traffic stop.” It later determined that ICE agents had mistaken Aljorna, who was driving the car, for another Latino man wholly uninvolved in the incident, and that Sosa-Celis, Aljorna’s roommate, was not involved in the car chase at all, according to an affidavit accompanying the DOJ’s charges.

Aljorna and Sosa-Celis were both detained for weeks after the shooting, then re-detained by ICE after a judge ordered their release. Their partners were also detained and transported to Texas in January. They have all since been released from detention and were temporarily barred from deportation during the case against them, the Star Tribune reported.

The charges come a month after Minnesota prosecutors filed their first charges against an ICE officer for allegedly brandishing his service weapon at two people in what prosecutors said appeared to be a road rage incident. Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr., the ICE agent, is still not in custody, though Moriarty said they have made “substantial progress” in getting Morgan to state court.

Moriarty said her office is still working on the fatal shootings of Good and Pretti and that she does not have a clear timeline for when they will be confident enough to decide whether to charge the federal agents who killed the two U.S. citizens. As in the Jan. 14 shooting, local investigations into the killings of Good and Pretti have been significantly hindered by federal non-cooperation, including denial of access to evidence. In March, Minnesota prosecutors filed a lawsuit seeking evidence from the federal government on the two fatal shootings and the Jan. 14 shooting.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Layoffs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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OneGov AI deals are now reaching millions of federal users, GSA says

Edward Graham — Mon, 18 May 2026 14:31:25 -0400

Millions of federal users can now take advantage of artificial intelligence-specific tools offered through the General Services Administration’s OneGov initiative, an agency official said on Friday.

Speaking on a panel at the ACT-IAC Emerging Technology and Innovation Conference, Birgit Smeltzer — director of GSA’s Office of IT Products, IT Category — said “more than 120 orders have been placed against OneGov’s AI offerings, and that has provided this new technology, or availability, to about 3.4 million across government for this particular technology.”

GSA launched OneGov in April 2025 as a way to offer agencies discounted rates on select private sector technologies and software services by treating the government as one customer. Twenty companies, including Microsoft and Adobe, have reached agreements with GSA so far to offer significant cost savings on some of their products.

These deals have also provided agencies and government personnel with the opportunity to onboard new AI capabilities, which GSA officials previously said is helping speed up government use of and experimentation with the tools.

Smeltzer said multiple agencies have already taken advantage of OneGov’s AI offerings, including the departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Transportation and State, among others. She added that AI offerings accessed through OneGov can enhance workforce familiarity with the tools as the government looks to increase adoption of the capabilities moving forward.

“Now, the agency makes it available to you for maybe a limited time, but you're able to use it in your workday, and can see how it can benefit you and get your work done more efficiently — perhaps without losing your job over [using] it,” Smeltzer said.

GSA officials have touted the cost savings associated with using products purchased through the initiative.

“We want GSA not to just be a shared service across government, but a force multiplier across the government,” GSA Deputy Administrator Mike Lynch said Tuesday at the Coalition for Common Sense in Government Procurement Spring Training Conference in Falls Church.

He added that GSA has identified $1.15 billion in savings through the OneGov program through negotiated discounts of a variety of AI and software tools using the collective buying power of the federal government. The program, Lynch said, will continue to mature in the coming year.

Lynch also said acquiring AI at discounted rates achieved through OneGov is an ideal follow-up for agencies that have experimented with AI and large language models through the USAi.gov shared service platform. Several thousand federal employees have used the USAi platform since GSA launched it last August in response to President Trump’s AI Action Plan.

“We want to see where we can add value, and we’re constantly checking in with industry partners and with agencies to ensure we’re providing world-class service,” Lynch said.

In a statement to Nextgov/FCW, a GSA spokesperson said the AI use and cost savings made possible through OneGov “are real, measurable results from unified buying and direct engagement with [original equipment manufacturers].”

GovExec Editor-in-Chief Frank Konkel contributed to this report.

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Why federal agencies still need to defend hiring standards

Robert J Choi — Mon, 18 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

In October 2024, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division reached a proposed $2.75 million settlement with the Maryland Department of State Police after alleging that the agency’s written exam and physical fitness test disproportionately excluded Black and female applicants and were not job-related or consistent with business necessity. The agreement required monetary relief and priority hiring opportunities for up to 25 previously disqualified candidates who met lawful hiring requirements.

Four months later, in February 2025, new Justice Department leadership moved to dismiss the case. Two months after that, President Trump signed Executive Order 14281, “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” which directed federal agencies to deprioritize disparate-impact enforcement to the maximum extent permitted by law.

For federal managers, the shift is real, but it should be described precisely. The underlying statutes did not disappear. Title VII’s disparate-impact framework remains codified in federal law. The Supreme Court has recognized disparate-impact claims under the Fair Housing Act.

Private Title VII plaintiffs can still bring disparate-impact employment claims, and private Fair Housing Act plaintiffs can still bring disparate-impact housing claims. Title VI is different: Under Alexander v. Sandoval, private plaintiffs cannot enforce disparate-impact regulations under Title VI, leaving agency enforcement especially important in that area.

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act is also in flux. In April 2026, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule stating that ECOA does not authorize disparate-impact liability under Regulation B, a position that changes federal regulatory enforcement but does not prevent future litigation over the statute’s meaning.

The doctrine being deprioritized has a specific employment-law origin. In Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), the Supreme Court read Title VII to prohibit facially neutral employment practices that screen out protected groups when the practices are not meaningfully related to job performance.

Congress later codified the disparate-impact framework in the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Under that framework, a plaintiff must identify a specific employment practice that causes a disparate impact; the employer may defend the practice by showing that it is job-related and consistent with business necessity; and the plaintiff may still prevail by showing that a less discriminatory alternative was available and refused.

That is more exact than saying that statistical gaps alone constitute discrimination, although statistical gaps often trigger the burden and cost of defending a selection system.

The cost record is substantial. The Maryland matter is one example. Gulino v. Board of Education, a long-running New York City teacher-certification case, produced judgments and payouts on an extraordinary scale, with public reporting placing the city’s potential exposure near $1.8 billion and the New York City comptroller identifying Gulino as a major driver of salary-claim payouts.

Federal departments have also entered consent decrees involving police, fire and other public-sector selection systems across several decades. The recurring operational pattern is familiar to HR leaders: A test produces adverse impact, the agency must defend the relationship between the test and the work, and the litigation risk often makes settlement more attractive than years of validation fights.

The premise underwriting this enforcement model deserves direct examination. Disparate-impact enforcement does not formally require perfect proportionality, but it often encourages agencies to treat demographic imbalance as presumptively suspicious before causation has been established.

That is a serious analytical problem. Groups differ in median age, geography, educational preparation, occupational concentration, language background, prior experience, applicant-pool composition, self-sorting and dozens of other variables that may sit upstream of any hiring decision.

A serious federal hiring system must distinguish barriers created by the agency from variation that arises before the agency’s selection process begins.

That said, federal managers should not read the executive order or later regulatory changes as permission to abandon validation. A selection device that does not predict job performance is bad management regardless of who passes it.

Reading comprehension may be defensible for troopers who prepare incident reports. Physical capacity may be defensible for officers expected to respond to emergencies. Content knowledge may be defensible for teachers responsible for classroom instruction.

The defensible question is not whether a test produces identical pass rates across groups; it is whether the test measures something the job actually requires, whether it does so fairly, and whether the agency can explain that relationship before a court, an inspector general, a union, Congress or the public.

Three concrete steps follow for federal HR leaders.

First, review existing consent decrees, corrective-action plans and workforce-reporting practices for provisions tied to disparate-impact theory, particularly where the agency is relying on older regulatory assumptions that may no longer reflect current federal enforcement policy.

Second, document the job-relatedness of any selection device the agency intends to keep, because private Title VII litigation remains available and statistical evidence will continue to appear in court even if federal enforcement priorities have changed.

Third, separate workforce reporting that identifies possible agency-created barriers from reporting that merely records demographic variation. The first is a management problem. The second is a descriptive fact.

Confusing the two has absorbed years of public-sector bandwidth that should have been spent improving mission performance.

The durable lesson for federal hiring is that standards should be defended through evidence, validation and operational relevance rather than through demographic balancing by another name.

Robert J. Choi is a former government executive and public-sector consultant. He previously served in the Central Intelligence Agency and as deputy chief people officer at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

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FEMA is not ready for hurricane season due to Trump upheaval, House Democrats argue

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 15 May 2026 14:02:00 -0400

Senior Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee in a letter on Thursday urged leaders of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to stabilize the disaster workforce before more storms are expected to hit the U.S.

“Hurricane season begins June 1, and by every available measure FEMA is less prepared to respond than it has been in a generation,” wrote ranking member Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Timothy Kennedy, D-N.Y., the top minority member of the panel’s Emergency Management and Technology Subcommittee.

In particular, the Democrats criticized the Trump administration’s staff cuts at FEMA. They wrote, based on a communication from the agency to the committee, that officials have pushed out more than 5,000 employees since January 2025. FEMA employs more than 20,000 people, according to its website.

The Homeland Security Department this month brought back around 200 FEMA contractors who were previously terminated, in part because of the upcoming hurricane season.

Thompson and Kennedy also pointed out that roughly half of FEMA’s top leadership positions are listed as vacant on the agency’s website, raising concerns about proper management.

On Monday, Trump announced his nominee, Cameron Hamilton, to serve as FEMA administrator. Hamilton was fired from being acting chief of the disaster agency in 2025 after testifying to a congressional panel that he did “not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate” FEMA.

The president had previously expressed a desire to shutter FEMA, but an administration-backed Review Council recently recommended that the federal disaster agency instead scale back operations in favor of state and local governments taking on a larger share of response and recovery.

In their letter, the lawmakers also cited a report from POLITICO that Trump has approved 23% of disaster funding requests from Democratic-led states compared with 89% for Republican ones.

“Regardless of seasonal forecasts, it only takes one storm to produce catastrophic loss of life and property,” Thompson and Kennedy wrote. “Americans in hurricane-prone communities deserve a FEMA that is fully staffed, operationally ready and nonpartisan. By every measure, they do not have that today.”

FEMA did not respond to a request for comment.

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Intelligence office names 2 officials to coordinate election security efforts ahead of 2026 midterms

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 15 May 2026 11:22:41 -0400

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently named two officials to a role coordinating with the nation’s spy agencies on threats against the 2026 midterm elections, according to a congressional source and a second person familiar with the matter.

Dave Mastro and James Cangialosi will jointly oversee the intelligence community’s election threat mission, serving in the role of election threats executive. Both sources requested anonymity to communicate the appointments.

Mastro serves on the National Intelligence Council, which produces intelligence assessments drawn from findings across the nation’s spy agencies, including reports requested by Congress and senior policymakers. Cangialosi serves as deputy director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center.

“We have an expansive team of professionals at ODNI focused on carrying out President [Donald] Trump’s and [Director of National Intelligence Tulsi] Gabbard’s election integrity efforts,” which includes Mastro and Cangialosi, ODNI spokesperson Olivia Coleman said in a statement.

The office is also “providing robust briefings, on par with efforts traditionally carried out during election years, to protect election integrity this midterm cycle,” Coleman said.

For months, it was unclear if ODNI ever named an election threats executive responsible for leading the intelligence community on election security for the coming midterm cycle.

The Record first reported the appointments.

Established in 2022, the Foreign Malign Influence Center was designed to coordinate spy agencies’ efforts to identify and assess foreign influence and disinformation threats targeting elections. But an overhaul inside ODNI launched last summer shifted many of the center’s responsibilities to the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and the National Intelligence Council, with ODNI arguing the previous structure raised constitutional concerns over coordination with social media companies.

The election threats executive — created in 2019 during Trump’s first term — typically oversees an “Experts Group” that analyzes intelligence on foreign interference efforts.

Election threats can include cyberattacks on voting systems, foreign influence operations and disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining public trust in elections.

The assignments come as Gabbard has faced criticism over her involvement in the White House’s broader review of election security outcomes, including scrutiny from Democrats tied to her presence during an FBI raid on a Georgia election office and ODNI-led examinations of voting machines in Puerto Rico.

This year’s annual intelligence assessment of worldwide threats to the U.S. did not describe foreign threats to the nation’s elections, the first time in nearly a decade.

Trump has continued to falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite courts, audits and state reviews finding no evidence of widespread fraud that would have changed the outcome.

The appointments also come amid broader changes to the federal government’s election security apparatus ahead of the 2026 midterms. In recent months, Democrats and state election officials have raised concerns over cuts to election-focused programs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has lost around a third of its workforce in the last year.

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More GLP-1 options are coming for federal retirees, but they come with a catch

Kevin Moss — Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 -0400

OPM requires FEHB plans to cover at least one GLP-1 prescribed for weight loss, and this extends to any Part D or Medicare Advantage plan offered by an FEHB carrier. As a result, most annuitants with federal retiree coverage have had a path to these drugs for years.

But that hasn’t been true for the broader Medicare population. When Congress created Part D more than two decades ago, it explicitly excluded coverage of drugs prescribed solely for weight loss or gain, meaning Medicare beneficiaries without employer-sponsored retiree benefits could only access GLP-1s if they had a qualifying condition like diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

This summer, that changes. CMS is launching the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge program, which will extend coverage of certain GLP-1 medications for weight loss to eligible Medicare beneficiaries, regardless of whether they have an underlying medical condition.

For annuitants enrolled in Part D, this program could expand your options. Here's what it covers, who qualifies, and what it means for you.

What is the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge Program?

CMS is launching this demonstration project on July 1, and it will provide access to a limited selection of GLP-1 weight loss drugs to eligible Medicare Part D beneficiaries. The program will operate outside of Part D’s benefit and payment structure. CMS is establishing a central processor to run the program.

Who qualifies for the program?

Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in Part D either from a standalone prescription drug plan (PDP) or from a Medicare Advantage plan that bundles Part D (MA-PD) who meet the prior authorization criteria are eligible. FEHB carriers provide Part D options through employer group waiver plans (EGWPs), and these types of plans are eligible for the program.

For the beneficiary to qualify, a provider must submit a prior authorization request to the program that attests “the beneficiary is prescribed the requested drug to reduce excess body weight and maintain weight reduction in combination with current and ongoing lifestyle modification including structured nutrition and physical activity consistent with the applicable FDA approved label, and the beneficiary is at least 18 years of age with a BMI greater than or equal to 35.” For beneficiaries with underlying medical conditions, the BMI threshold is lowered to 30 or 25 based on the diagnosis.

Will I save money in this program?

Not necessarily. The GLP-1 Bridge Program charges a $50 copay for each covered drug, which could be more than what you’d pay with Part D coverage from your FEHB plan. For example, the .25mg injectable version of Wegovy is $35 from the Part D plan with BCBS Standard and $45 from the Part D plan with BCBS Basic.

You’ll need to check the prescription drug pricing tool on your FEHB carrier’s website and compare prices to find out if there are any savings.

Will I have greater access to GLP-1’s in this program?

Probably, and this will likely be the biggest advantage for federal annuitants. The GLP-1 Bridge Program provides access to all formulations of Wegovy and Foundayo, and the KwikPen formulation of Zepbound.

While OPM requires each FEHB plan to cover GLP-1 medications, they aren’t required to cover all of them. For example, BCBS covers Wegovy in their Basic and Standard plans, but they don’t cover Zepbound and Foundayo. In fact, Foundayo just received FDA approval last month and many FEHB plans aren’t yet covering this medication. Annuitants should go to the carrier website for their plan and use the prescription drug lookup tool to see which medications the plan covers.

Are there reasons not to use this program?

Yes. Since this program operates outside of your Part D plan, it means that the $50 copay does not go toward the Part D catastrophic limit ($2,100 in most FEHB Part D plans) or the medical catastrophic limit of your FEHB plan. Not having those costs counted could lead to higher overall out-of-pocket costs.

This demonstration project also has an expiration date of December 31, 2027, at which point it could lead to greater GLP-1 adoption in the Medicare program, or it could simply be terminated.

I’m subject to IRMAA and have opted out of Part D, should I reconsider?

Maybe. You'll need to weigh the Part D IRMAA surcharge against the potential drug cost savings. Here's an example using Wegovy (0.25mg injectable):

Without Part D (BCBS Standard): $640.30/month
With Part D (BCBS Standard): $35.00/month
Highest IRMAA surcharge: $91.00/month

Even at the highest IRMAA tier, enrolling in Part D would cost you $126/month ($35 drug cost + $91 surcharge), a savings of $514.30/month compared to paying out of pocket with regular prescription drug coverage from BCBS Standard. It's also worth noting that Part D eligibility only requires Part A enrollment, so if you've opted out of Part B, you don't need to enroll to access Part D savings.

How do I use the GLP-1 Bridge Program?

Talk with your doctor, not your FEHB plan. They’ll submit the prior authorization request to the program’s central processor for an eligible GLP-1 drug. You’ll pick up your medication at the pharmacy and pay the $50 copay there. More operational details will be forthcoming from CMS in the next few weeks prior to the July 1st launch.

Kevin Moss is a senior editor with the Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees provided by Consumers’ Checkbook. Watch more of his free advice and check here to see if the Guide is available for free from your agency. You can also purchase the Guide and save 20% with promo code GOVEXEC.

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House Homeland panel gets a rare look at advanced AI tool amid escalating cyber concerns

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 15 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Members of the House Homeland Security Committee were briefed Wednesday on Mythos, the Anthropic artificial intelligence model that has drawn vast attention across the cybersecurity community for its advanced hacking capabilities.

Anthropic executives provided the panel with a live demonstration of Mythos, allowing members to see how advanced AI can identify and reason through software vulnerabilities, according to a committee aide who attended the briefing and requested anonymity to communicate details of the demo.

“What we saw reinforced the urgency of ensuring that federal agencies, including our civilian cyber defenders, can responsibly access and deploy the most advanced U.S. models to find and patch vulnerabilities before foreign adversaries or criminal actors exploit them,” said the aide, who noted the briefing was one of the first live demonstrations delivered to Congress.

President Donald Trump is meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, where AI competition is expected to come up in the discussion. Last month, the White House accused Beijing of attempting to copy components of U.S. AI systems to build similar models of its own through a process known as distillation.

“As the [People’s Republic of China] aggressively works to close the AI innovation gap with the United States, the committee remains focused on ensuring that America’s AI leadership translates into a durable national security advantage, not a temporary lead that adversaries can copy, steal or rapidly commoditize,” the aide added.

The briefing was “productive and focused on a range of AI security and competitiveness issues,” according to a second person familiar with the demo.

Members discussed how the U.S. can preserve its advantage in AI, including maintaining leadership in compute power and preventing China from obtaining advanced chips, said the person, who added that attendees discussed safeguards for advanced AI models and ensuring future systems are developed and deployed safely and securely.

Lawmakers also asked questions about Anthropic’s engagement with the federal government, including whether an ongoing legal dispute over a Defense Department supply chain risk designation against the company is affecting conversations about the use of AI models across federal agencies, including at CISA, which reportedly doesn’t have full access to the model.

The second person did not add additional details about who in the government has access to Mythos, but said “the implications of advanced AI tools for state and local governments and under-resourced critical infrastructure sectors, including water systems, were also discussed.”

Mythos, unveiled last month, was held back from a full public release on the grounds that it could pose national security risks in the wrong hands. U.S. critical infrastructure stakeholders have been vying for access to the tool so it can be run against their own systems to identify and patch previously undiscovered vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers.

The Hill first reported news of the demo.

It’s unclear which government agencies have access to Mythos, although multiple reports and people familiar with the matter previously confirmed to Nextgov/FCW that the NSA is among them.

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., told Politico that he and Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., were briefed on Mythos by Gen. Joshua Rudd, who leads Cyber Command and the NSA, but did not provide further details.

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White House withholds $1.3B in Medicaid payments to California amid broader fraud crackdown

Edward Graham — Fri, 15 May 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Vice President JD Vance announced on Wednesday that the federal government is “deferring” $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to California and said the administration would withhold payments from additional states if they do not ramp up their efforts to root out fraud in federal benefits programs.

The notice came as part of President Donald Trump’s “war on fraud,” which Vance is leading as the head of the White House’s anti-fraud task force.

The unit, established in March by executive order, was granted the authority to withhold funding from state and local jurisdictions “that do not have adequate anti-fraud requirements,” per the order, although the effort has been somewhat clouded by allegations of political bias. The directive establishing the task force noticeably specifically called out Democrat-led states for failing to address fraud in their benefits programs.

The White House kicked off its fraud prevention efforts by announcing in February it was withholding more than $240 million in Medicaid funding from Minnesota following allegations of misuse of public funds in the state’s social services.

Vance said the move to withhold Medicaid payments from California, in particular, was because the administration believes the state “has not taken fraud very seriously.”

He downplayed any partisan undertones for the administration’s broader fraud prevention push, saying “we have red states and blue states that go after fraud aggressively,” although he added that “we also unfortunately have some states — mostly blue states, unfortunately — that do not take Medicaid fraud very seriously.”

During Wednesday’s news conference, Vance also said the federal government plans to review every state’s federally-funded Medicaid Fraud Control Units — or MFCUs — and will “turn off” funding for those watchdogs if their fraud prevention efforts are deemed insufficient.

“And if we continue to find problems, we can turn off other resources within their state Medicaid programs as well,” he added.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on Wednesday that attorneys general in all 50 states received a letter from Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General Thomas Bell stating that the administration will be conducting “a robust review” of their MFCUs to ensure they are effectively combating Medicaid fraud.

“We want to help you use technology and other tools to get rid of the fraud, to get to the root of the fraud,” Vance said during the news conference about working with states to bolster their fraud prevention efforts. “We want to help you, but we can only help these state programs if those state programs are willing to help themselves. So these letters are the first step — the first effort — to try to force these states to get serious about prosecuting fraud, and that's exactly what we're doing.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also announced on Wednesday that it is implementing a six-month freeze on all new Medicare enrollments for hospices and home health agencies to halt what it called “high-risk categories” for fraudulent activity.

Since the start of Trump’s second administration, CMS has touted its use of new tools and technologies, including artificial intelligence, to better identify improper payments.

During a March interview with Nextgov/FCW, Kim Brandt — deputy administrator and chief operating officer at CMS — said the agency was using many of these capabilities in its Fraud Defense Operations Center to help “detect spikes or aberrancies in current claim submissions.”

Brandt said at the time FDOC’s work, including the use of AI and enhanced data analysis, allowed the agency to save over $2 billion that would have otherwise gone toward improper Medicare payments. She added that CMS was looking to expand out its new technologies to identify further waste, fraud and abuse in the Medicaid program.

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Secret Service funding fight sharpens over White House modernization push

Jennifer Shutt and Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom — Thu, 14 May 2026 16:08:09 -0400

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday pressed for increased funding for the Secret Service, arguing most of the money Senate Republicans included for the agency in their immigration enforcement bill is for security needs, not building a new ballroom at the White House.

The Louisiana Republican added during a morning press conference he didn’t want to “prejudge” the $72 billion package before the Senate approves a final version this month and sends it to the House.

“I don't have the pen in the Senate. They’re writing the bill,” he said. “We’ll see what we get.”

Johnson noted there are several more steps the legislation must go through in the Senate, including a review by the parliamentarian to make sure all provisions fit within the strict rules of the reconciliation process, committee debate and a marathon amendment voting session on the floor.

Johnson said President Donald Trump “is excited about building a ballroom with private funding,” though that project comes with additional needs that will likely require taxpayer dollars.

“The Secret Service says that as we enhance the White House grounds and the modernization there that obviously we have to think differently about security,” he said. “We live in a very dangerous time and there are new and increasing threats that we have never faced before. And so Congress has a role in funding that and we’ll have to see how it all works out.”

Urgent request

Johnson asserted the bill Senate Republicans released last week “very specifically defined” how the Secret Service could use the additional funding.

The legislation would provide $1 billion available until Sept. 30, 2029, for “security adjustments and upgrades … to support enhancements by the United States Secret Service relating to the East Wing Modernization Project.”

The bill would limit the Secret Service from using any of the funding “for non-security elements.”

Johnson said GOP lawmakers added the funding to the immigration enforcement spending bill after the Secret Service “put in an urgent request for additional security measures.”

“We’ve needed some of these security measures for a long time,” he said. “And that’s what this is all about.”

Congress provided the Secret Service with $3.25 billion in the annual funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security that lawmakers passed in late April.

Republicans approved an additional $1.17 billion for the Secret Service in their “big, beautiful” law that the agency can use through September 2029 for personnel, training, technology as well as performance, retention and signing bonuses.

Normally, the White House budget office would publicly send Congress a supplemental spending request, asking lawmakers to approve the additional money. That would then be vetted by the Appropriations Committees, though that didn’t happen in this case.

The Trump administration also could have included a boost in funding in the budget request officials sent Congress in early April that asked members to approve $3.5 billion for the Secret Service in the annual funding bill for the agency due by the end of September.

Funding breakdown

Secret Service Director Sean Curran gave Republican senators more details about how the agency plans to use the additional funding during a closed-door lunch this week, though the bill would not actually require the agency to spend the money as outlined.

A breakdown obtained by States Newsroom showed:

$220 million would go to “hardening” the East Wing Modernization Project with additional bulletproof glass, drone detection technologies and filtration systems designed to detect chemical or other contaminants.
$180 million would go toward construction of a “long overdue” White House visitor screening facility.
$175 million would bolster Secret Service training as well as its training facilities.
$175 million would help the agency “secure frequently visited venues facing heightened risk due to their public visibility and static nature.”
$150 million would go to the branch of the Secret Service that focuses on drones, aircraft incursions, biological threats and “other emerging threats” through investments in state-of-the-art technologies.
$100 million for “high-profile national events that require significant planning.”

Republican senators said after that meeting they wanted more information from the Secret Service on exactly how the agency would spend the additional funding before they vote on the package.

Thune predicts passage next week

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Wednesday morning most GOP senators will ultimately support the additional funding for the Secret Service “that's needed to enable them to do their jobs.”

“Obviously there are security implications related to the modernization of the East Wing. And that represents, I think, of the total request that Secret Service made, about 20%,” he said. “The balance of it, I think, are things that they've been putting off for a long time, but need to be done, especially in a modern threat environment where you've had, you know, now, three assassination attempts in the last two years.”

Thune said his “aspirational timeline” is to have committees debate their bills early next week, followed by floor action on the full package later in the week.

“It can always be affected by other factors,” he said. “But I think at least right now, that's the goal.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during a floor speech that Trump’s focus on building a “gilded ballroom” shows the president “is living in the theater of the absurd.”

Schumer said Americans don’t want to see government leaders focused on the ballroom project when inflation, food costs and gasoline prices have all increased.

“I would say Trump has completely lost touch with the American people, but that would assume that Trump was ever in touch with the American people to begin with,” he said. “And on this issue he sure as heck isn’t.”

President Donald Trump has promoted the ballroom project as part of a broader White House modernization effort.

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VA security personnel aren’t detecting knives or booze, according to a watchdog report assessing medical facility security

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 14 May 2026 15:04:16 -0400

Police officers who guard Veterans Affairs Department medical facilities failed to address security issues in a majority of covert tests conducted by the Government Accountability Office, which also determined that VA leaders have not fully implemented federal building security best practices.

The report, which was published on Wednesday, found that:

VA staff at all 30 locations that were examined failed to detect a multi-tool with a prohibited knife blade. Investigators noted that only two of the buildings had metal detectors: one of them was not in use and in the other case the device set the detector off but officers did not act on it.
In 25 out of 26 tests, VA employees did not notice or respond to an undercover GAO investigator who was drinking from a bottle that appeared to contain alcohol in a waiting room, even though guards were nearby in more than a quarter of the cases.
At eight of 16 facilities, investigators were able to enter nonpublic spaces, such as offices, treatment rooms and a blood draw lab.

In 2025, GAO similarly reported that contracted guards for agencies governmentwide failed to detect prohibited items in about half of its covert tests.

The VA has more than 4,300 police officers, physical security specialists and investigators as well as roughly 800 contract security guards.

VA’s inspector general found that in fiscal 2025 police officers were the most frequently reported severe nonclinical occupational staffing shortage in the department, with 58% of medical facilities saying they didn’t have enough security personnel.

Quinn Slaven, VA’s press secretary, said by email to Government Executive that officials have worked to address the issue by collaborating with the Office of Personnel Management to reclassify department police officers so that they can receive higher pay. He also said that the VA has consolidated law enforcement operations under one office, so that officers aren’t reporting to multiple different medical center directors.

GAO also faulted the VA for not adhering to Interagency Security Committee risk management standards for federal buildings. Specifically, officials are not consistently documenting why they make certain security decisions considering available resources or measuring the performance of protective measures.

The watchdog recommended that VA enact the government facility security guidelines.

“By fully implementing this standard, VA will be better able to make informed decisions, effectively allocate resources and prioritize security efforts at its medical facilities,” they wrote. “In addition, fully implementing this standard could help VA ensure it has appropriate security at its medical facilities to create a safe environment for veterans and VA staff.”

In the new report, GAO also found that about 98% of the approximately 74,700 crimes reported by the VA police in fiscal years 2024 and 2025 were nonviolent.

GAO said in the report that the VA did not provide comments on the investigation. Agencies typically offer feedback on investigations by the watchdog that officials then incorporate into the report. Slaven, however, told Government Executive that the VA did submit comments but that GAO didn’t include them.

In response, a GAO spokesperson said that VA submitted a message agreeing with the recommendations in the report after it had been sent to the senator who requested the investigation.

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