Government Executive - All Content

Space Command says it needs to ‘shoot, move and communicate’ in orbit

Thomas Novelly — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 19:19:38 -0400

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Space weapons and refuelable satellites are among the items needed to preserve the U.S. military’s orbital edge over China, the head of U.S. Space Command said.

America’s adversaries are targeting U.S. space assets and rapidly developing their own, Gen. Stephen Whiting told attendees at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium on Wednesday. China, for example, has direct-ascent ASAT missiles, ground-based lasers, jammers, and maneuverable, dual-use satellites, he said.

“These developments intend to degrade our current space superiority and would potentially give

China a maneuver and logistics advantage in space – something we would not accept on the land, at sea, or in the air,” Whiting said.

In the four-star’s final Space and Missile Defense Symposium speech as the leader of the combatant command, Whiting told military and industry audience members that there are five major things on U.S. Space Command’s Integrated Priorities List for 2029 to 2033.

“This isn’t just a wishlist. It’s a clear demand signal to several audiences describing the warfighting capabilities we need to meet our mission,” he said.

1. Integrated space fires: Mirroring Army usage, Whiting has used this term throughout his tenure at Space Command to refer to the offensive and defensive capabilities needed to deter orbiting threats.“

We’re a combatant command and we fight to win wars,” he said. “To win, we need credible, acknowledged, kinetic and non-kinetic fires. They are a key component of how we establish space superiority and restore credible deterrence.”

2. Counter-pLEO tech: Whiting said new technology is needed to counter adversaries’ low-Earth-orbit satellite constellations. As of last month, China has launched 200 G60 and 168 SatNet communications satellites as it builds a pair of “mega constellations...to compete with Western proliferated LEO (pLEO) architectures,” according to a Space Force fact sheet.

“I don't want any U.S. force to be put at risk because somebody else might have a proliferated low-Earth-orbit constellation that could find, fix, track, and target them,” Whiting told reporters after his keynote address.

3. Joint, integrated space command and control: Military leaders often stress the centrality of being able to oversee, organize, and order complex space operations.

“We must enhance machine-to-machine connectivity to support decision-making and battle management of this global space fight on tactically relevant timelines,” Whiting said in his address.

4. Dedicated space domain awareness for space engagements: It’s not just for missile defense, Whiting said: space domain awareness needs to expand and evolve to a whole range of space operations, not just one segment of it.

“We must adopt a ‘target-quality track’ mindset to everything we do in space, just like the missile defense community has done for decades,” he said.

5. Sustained space maneuver: Developing satellites that can be refueled to extend their usefulness remains one of U.S. Space Command key priorities. In March, a Chinese commercial satellite used a flexible robotic arm to “to demonstrate on-orbit servicing, refueling, and debris removal,” according to the Space Force.

“Today, our satellites are limited by the fuel they launch with, which leads to a psychology of scarcity. Husbanding that fuel often overrides desired warfighting maneuvers,” Whiting said. “That must change. We must be able to actively avoid threats and maneuver to gain a position of advantage on our adversaries.”

Whiting has pitched some of these items at past symposiums; in 2024, he said his 2027 Integrated Priorities List was topped by space fires and resilient command and control.

“Our space assets need to shoot, move, and communicate just like the rest of the Joint Force,” Whiting said Wednesday. “In short, space needs to fight like the Joint Force, to empower the Joint Force’s ability to fight and undermine our adversaries’ ability to do so.”

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Federal agencies are looking beyond the usual sources for new ideas

John Breeden II — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 18:01:58 -0400

A few years ago, I tried to help a team of astronauts survive a Martian dust storm.

Fortunately, nobody was actually in danger. I was participating in the second NASA MarsXR Challenge, a government-sponsored competition hosted on the HeroX open-innovation platform. NASA wanted members of the public to design virtual reality scenarios that could someday help train astronauts for missions on Mars.

The first phase focused on storyboarding, so participants did not need to know how to program a VR simulation. They needed to imagine a realistic challenge, explain how astronauts would respond and take advantage of the immersive capabilities offered by virtual reality. My team designed a scenario in which astronauts left their rover behind while collecting rock samples in terrain too rough for a vehicle. When a surprise dust storm swept into the area and visibility began to collapse, they had to navigate back to the rover using digital waypoints and beacons they had placed along their route.

It seemed like a plausible worst-case scenario and, admittedly, a pretty exciting video game mission. The design required astronauts to think ahead, use the available technology and remain calm when conditions suddenly changed. Our entry earned an honorable mention in the first phase. We did not advance to the programming round, where winning concepts could be developed into functioning VR training missions, but the experience gave me a firsthand look at how seriously NASA approaches open-innovation competitions.

NASA has used HeroX and the NASA Tournament Lab to solicit outside ideas for everything from virtual reality astronaut training to building better lunar rover wheels. Some of the most visible government-sponsored challenges over the past several years have naturally focused on space exploration.

But one of the most consequential challenges open in 2026 is aimed at a problem that is far more Earth-bound and deeply human. The National Institutes of Health’s Office of AIDS Research is offering $1 million in prizes for ideas that could help more people gain access to long-acting HIV prevention and treatment. The competition, called the NIH ARISE-HIV LAUNCH Challenge, is open for first-round submissions through Aug. 6.

Federal government involvement goes well beyond an agency endorsement for the HIV Challenge. The Office of AIDS Research is the official sponsor and is providing the $1 million prize purse. The NIH Office of the Director is conducting the challenge under the federal prize authority established by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act.

The challenge is also part of a broader program called Advancing Research in Implementation Science to End HIV, or ARISE-HIV. That effort involves all NIH institutes, centers and offices that award HIV funding or support related prevention, care and treatment research. HeroX provides the public competition platform, and the challenge appears through the NASA Tournament Lab’s wider open-innovation network.

To be clear, the current contest is not asking participants to invent a new HIV medication. Scientists have already developed long-acting products that can prevent or treat HIV without requiring patients to take a pill every day. Some are administered every two months, while others can provide protection for as long as six months. The challenge is getting those advances to the people who need them and making sure they remain connected to care.

In an August 2025 post reflecting on her appearance with NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya on The Director’s Desk podcast, Office of AIDS Research Director Geri R. Donenberg described the gap the new challenge is trying to address.

“We have effective, lifesaving interventions, but people are not benefiting equally,” she wrote.

Donenberg explained that implementation science can help determine how, where and by whom effective treatments should be delivered to reach different populations. An approach that works well for patients in one community may prove impractical in another because of transportation, cost, staffing, stigma, scheduling or limited access to health care.

That is where the LAUNCH Challenge comes in. NIH is asking participants to develop actionable ideas in at least one of four areas: access, delivery, engagement or retention.

An access proposal might explore how mobile clinics, home-based services, street medicine or pharmacists could bring long-acting products to people who are not well served by traditional health care systems. A delivery proposal could address the staffing or coordination needed to administer injections safely and reliably. That might include evening appointments, transportation assistance, child care support or better integration with mental health and substance-use services.

Engagement proposals could focus on building awareness, understanding and trust among patients and their families. Finally, retention ideas might help patients remain on schedule and connected to care during the months between appointments. But those are just a few suggestions. By all means, if you have better ideas, feel free to participate in this new challenge and earn a share of the prize money.

NIH is deliberately casting a wide net looking for precipitants. Individuals, informal teams, community organizations, health professionals, researchers, universities and companies can all participate. People and organizations that do not currently receive NIH funding are specifically encouraged to enter as the agency is looking for fresh and new ideas.

The first-round submission for the ARISE-HIV Challenge is pretty approachable. Participants need to complete an online concept submission totaling about three pages. Participants must also provide a short public abstract and identify whether their proposal addresses access, delivery, engagement, retention or some combination of those areas.

Judges will place the greatest weight on public health significance and impact, which accounts for 40% of the score. Innovation and novelty make up 35%, while the remaining 25% focuses on whether the idea is pragmatic enough to work outside a controlled research environment. HeroX and government officials explained the judging process and the importance of the challenge in a recent YouTube video.

Completed Phase 1 entries must be submitted through HeroX by 5 p.m. Eastern on Aug. 6. NIH expects to award as many as 35 first-round prizes of $10,000 each. Those winners will be invited into Phase 2, where they will develop more detailed implementation and evaluation plans. Up to 13 second-round winners could receive approximately $50,000 each.

And this is a busy time for government sponsored and federally focused challenges as the HIV event is not the only one being opened to outside solvers. The Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity recently launched the $500,000 Storage Design Strategies to Ease Production Prize, known as the Storage Design STEP Prize. It asks developers of emerging grid-scale storage technologies to identify manufacturing, material-sourcing and supply-chain obstacles before those problems prevent promising designs from reaching commercial production. Phase 1 entries are due Oct. 8.

Another active competition, the privately organized GoAERO Prize, is supported by NASA, RTX, Boeing, Honeywell, Iridium and other partners. Teams for that challenge are actually building compact, portable aircraft that could autonomously carry a person or emergency supplies into areas where conventional rescue vehicles cannot easily reach. Its final fly-off will take place at NASA’s Ames Research Center in April 2027. The best overall performer can earn $1 million, with additional prizes for missions involving rapid deployment, difficult conditions and precise maneuvering around obstacles.

The live challenges are radically different, but they share the same underlying idea. Agencies and other sponsors describe a difficult problem, establish rules and rewards, then open the door to people who may never have encountered the issue through a conventional grant, contract or government job.

My Mars scenario never became a functioning astronaut-training mission. But earning an honorable mention showed that someone outside NASA could still contribute an idea the agency considered useful. The next valuable idea may come from a community health worker who understands why patients miss appointments, an engineer trying to manufacture a new kind of battery or an aviation team that knows how to reach people stranded after a disaster.

For readers with a useful perspective, technical skill or firsthand understanding of one of these problems, the invitation is real: take a look, join a team or submit an idea. You may not win the top prize, but you could still contribute something that advances a technology, helps an agency or improves someone’s life.

John Breeden II is an award-winning journalist and reviewer with over 20 years of experience covering technology. He is the CEO of the Tech Writers Bureau, a group that creates technological thought leadership content for organizations of all sizes. Twitter: @LabGuys

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VA’s benefits system overhaul is running into some familiar problems

Edward Graham — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 11:28:50 -0400

Efforts to modernize a Department of Veterans Affairs system that supports the processing of veterans’ benefits claims have been hampered by “insufficient oversight and weak program management,” according to the agency’s Office of Inspector General.

The watchdog warned in an audit released on Tuesday that VA’s Office of Information and Technology has not taken all of the necessary steps to keep the revamp of the agency’s Benefits Enterprise Platform on track, which could potentially affect the processing of veterans’ benefits and other modernization efforts.

The BEP platform — one of 85 legacy systems that VA has identified as needing to be modernized or decommissioned to “improve overall efficiency of claims processing” — helps facilitate the sharing of information between the Veterans Benefits Administration and other “business line systems” that include pension, vocational rehabilitation and employment benefits.

VA awarded Booz Allen Hamilton a $1.1 billion contract in May 2021 to integrate its benefits systems into a new cloud-based Benefits Integration Platform, with the plan calling for the legacy BEP system to be migrated to this new service and then subsequently decommissioned. Although the contract was supposed to be completed this month, OIG noted that the latest timetable from VA said the BEP modernization effort is now slated to be completed in the second quarter of fiscal year 2034.

"Because BEP supports a significant number of systems, there is increased risk that other systems relying on it may experience negative consequences from potential delays in the modernization effort,” the report said.

The audit said the Office of Information and Technology failed to develop “a high-quality, reliable program schedule as recommended by the Government Accountability Office’s Schedule Assessment Guide” for the project and has instead relied on an agile project management tool for the effort — a tool that “does not contain roadmaps or detailed plans for the entire scope of the project.”

OIG also found that the office lacked a reliable lifecycle cost estimate for the modernization initiative, which has resulted in inconsistent funding information being included in various BEP plans and has “limit[ed] VA’s ability to make informed decisions.”

Lack of proper oversight, the watchdog reported, also may have jeopardized the security of veterans’ sensitive personal data when the office “hosted minor applications without conducting required security assessments.” After OIG notified VA officials about documented vulnerabilities — some of which dated as far back as 2021 — the watchdog said VA took the necessary steps to assess the security of its applications and remediate any identified issues.

OIG’s audit recommended that VA take steps to enhance its BEP modernization efforts, including by developing and maintaining a program schedule that aligns with best practices, ensuring that staff are following proper procedures when it comes to storing scheduling information, developing a “reliable, validated life cycle cost estimate” for the project and tracking all relevant project costs. VA officials said they concurred with the watchdog’s recommendations.

The BEP project is just the latest VA modernization initiative to be singled out for criticism by OIG for resulting in significant delays, cost overruns and oversight gaps.

VA is still in the process of developing a new digital GI Bill system, which the watchdog noted in an August 2024 report has seen its cost more than double as a result of “insufficient planning.”

The agency’s large-scale electronic health record modernization project has also been plagued by cost overruns, delays and oversight issues since the deployment effort began in earnest in 2020. The Trump administration has prioritized righting that effort, however, and VA Secretary Doug Collins said earlier this year that an EHR rollout resumption push has been “phenomenal” so far.

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NTEU sets deadline for its members to resume paying dues

Jory Heckman — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Amid the Trump administration’s rollback of collective bargaining rights across the federal workforce, the National Treasury Employees Union is setting a deadline for many of its members to resume paying dues.

According to three union officials, NTEU members who do not sign up for dues payments by Sept. 5 will lose access to the union’s benefits until they resume paying dues.

This includes eligibility for NTEU representation, either individually or as part of a group, the opportunity to receive remedies or settlements won through NTEU litigation, as well as member-only information and updates.

Last month, an independent arbitrator sided with NTEU and ordered the IRS to restore 2024-era telework agreements for its workforce. Meanwhile, a federal judge has barred IRS officials from confiscating and disposing of pro-NTEU flyers and other decorations from employees’ communal and personal workspaces.

NTEU's deadline will impact thousands of members who are currently not paying dues to the union.

“We have not imposed any specific requirements to pay dues for over a year, but we have to get the ball rolling again,” one union official told Government Executive.

NTEU did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Although NTEU represents federal employees at 38 departments and offices, about half of all NTEU members work at the IRS. The IRS terminated its collective bargaining agreement with NTEU in February.

In a pair of executive orders signed last year, President Donald Trump cited a seldom-used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to bar unions at nearly 40 agencies on national security grounds.

Those executive orders have stripped collective bargaining rights from roughly two-thirds of NTEU’s members. NTEU is challenging the executive orders, and the litigation remains pending.

Following the Trump administration executive orders, many agencies stopped automatic dues deductions from employees’ paychecks, dealing a significant blow to union revenue.

“This is going to have a lasting impact on the labor movement within the federal workforce,” a second union official said.

In a lawsuit challenging the executive orders, NTEU wrote that the administration’s actions will “immediately and drastically reduce the number of employees that NTEU represents and prevent NTEU from collecting dues from those members via payroll deduction.”

“This will threaten NTEU’s very existence and will severely diminish NTEU’s influence at the bargaining table,” the union wrote in its March 2025 complaint.

In fiscal 2024, member dues accounted for nearly 85% of NTEU's total revenue, the union wrote in its complaint. The unions received about 95% of those dues through payroll deductions.

The American Federation of Government Employees touted a surge in new dues-paying members in the early days of the second Trump administration. But the Associated Press reported in April 2025 that AFGE laid off more than half of their staff.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley said the union’s finances took a “very direct hit,” after the administration's executive orders removed over 200,000 of its dues-paying members.

Early in the Trump administration’s union crackdown, AFGE encouraged its members to pay their union dues directly to AFGE through regularly scheduled online payments.

In February 2026, NTEU began a phased rollout of its own online payment system, called “Dues Direct,” which allowed members who previously paid dues via automatic payroll deductions to send payments directly to NTEU. According to union officials, NTEU did not impose any deadline for members at impacted agencies to sign up for Dues Direct until it fully completed all phases of the system’s rollout.

The second union official said NTEU leadership has tried to avoid frustrating members who never stopped paying their dues because their agencies still recognize the union.

“Agencies that haven’t had their payroll deductions turned off have been putting pressure on NTEU leadership for over a year to take this action,” the second union official said.

NTEU’s second-largest agency, Customs and Border Protection, still allows its employees to pay union dues via payroll deductions. CBP employees make up about 25% of NTEU’s total membership.

But in several IRS chapters, NTEU leaders have only gotten a small percentage of their members to enroll in Dues Direct.

“I think it’s intentional on the part of the administration, to demoralize our workers, starve the union, and try to make it look like the union can’t help,” the second union official said. “I don’t know how we’re going to ever rebuild, if we win in court and retain our right to unionize.”

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IRS says a new policy ‘moots’ NTEU’s First Amendment lawsuit. The union isn’t so sure

Erich Wagner — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 17:31:42 -0400

The Internal Revenue Service says a new policy governing what materials may posted in communal office spaces like bulletin boards clears the agency of accusations that it violated employees’ First Amendment rights when it began confiscating flyers and decorations supportive of the National Treasury Employees Union.

But attorneys representing the union said they’ve thus far received mixed messages as to whether the new policy would adequately address the concerns underlying a federal lawsuit stemming from the initial May directive.

On May 29, IRS issued a directive, purportedly stemming from President Trump’s 2025 executive order banning collective bargaining at many agencies, instructing its facilities management employees to remove “any and all NTEU materials” in IRS facilities using “whatever steps necessary,” short of vandalism. A federal lawsuit the following month documented instances in which NTEU flyers and decorations were taken from communal bulletin boards, stolen from employees’ cubicles and, in several cases, destroyed.

In late June, the IRS and NTEU jointly filed a stipulation to the court, announcing that agency management agreed to halt its campaign and return any union materials that had been confiscated but not yet destroyed.

In a new filing last week, IRS informed the court that it had promulgated a new policy, this time stating that only “agency-sponsored materials” and non-agency documents mandated by law, such as Occupational Safety and Health Administration notices, may be permitted in communal spaces such as bulletin boards. Employees may still decorate their workspace as they wish, provided they are consistent with federal ethics, equal employment opportunity and other existing IRS rules.

“[Facilities Management and Security Services] retains exclusive authority over posting and displays of materials in common areas or on designated bulletin boards of IRS facilities, and will only authorize agency-sponsored materials, with the exception of non-agency materials mandated by law,” the August 4 memo states. “Employees are not authorized to post written materials in IRS facilities.”

As part of its filing, IRS asked the union if it would entertain dismissing the portion of its lawsuit against the agency stemming from the materials confiscation policy as “moot,” noting that policies governing speech are generally not considered First Amendment violations if they are “content neutral.”

NTEU, in its response filed Monday, said it needs more information as it has received “conflicting information” about the new policy and its implementation.

“The language of the August 4 policy says, for example, that the only materials that may be posted in IRS workplace common areas are ‘agency-sponsored materials,’ which the IRS interprets as ‘materials created at the behest of the IRS and for the purpose of IRS business,’” the union wrote. “But the IRS’ Facilities Management and Security Services is posting notices telling employees, in contrast to the August 4 policy, that it may approve ‘non-agency-sponsored materials for display in common areas’ . . . NTEU might challenge this policy if it believes that it is merely a façade for viewpoint-based discrimination.”

But even if the new policy does assuage NTEU’s concerns, that would not be the end of the legal challenge. That’s because last month, the union amended its complaint to include additional alleged First Amendment violations, this time in the form of a content filter blocking access to the union’s website from agency computers.

If someone tries to access NTEU.org from an agency work station, a splash screen appears warning that the site has been flagged for “potentially damaging content,” for which the ban has “very limited or no exceptions.”

According to the IRS’ IT regulations, employees are barred from accessing pornography, “personal services” like online dating or most social media, hacking websites, online games, “proxy avoidance” sites and filesharing. One IRS employee told Government Executive the web filter typically lists one of those six categories when blocking a website; conversely, they had never seen the “potentially damaging” category before.

Also unusual was language suggesting that the restrictions would have “very limited or no exceptions,” the employee said. In most cases, IRS has a process by which employees may request an exception to access a website that has been blocked for a business need, such as for an audit or other investigation.

According to the amended complaint, the agency has also gone so far as to block all emails originating from the nteu.org domain. This has had damaging ramifications for employees involved in EEO cases and appeals before the Merit Systems Protection Board, the union said.

“When one NTEU attorney who had filed an MSPB case on behalf of an IRS employee engaged in settlement discussions over the phone with the agency attorney, the agency attorney told him that she would email him a document,” the complaint states. “After a day or two, however, the NTEU attorney had not received the document, even though the agency attorney insisted that she sent it. After another few days, the NTEU attorney told that agency attorney that he would go to the MSPB judge if he continued to not receive the document. Then, another day or two later, he was able to send emails to and receive them from the agency attorney.”

Ultimately, the IRS unblocked emails associated with NTEU for managers, HR personnel and some attorneys at the agency; it left it in place for members of the bargaining unit.

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‘We’re still in hell’: A year later, CDC employees remain shaken by headquarters shooting — and angry at agency leaders’ response

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 17:00:11 -0400

About a year ago, a gunman opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine opened fire on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s headquarters in Atlanta, killing a responding police officer before committing suicide. There’s still damage from the attack that hasn’t been repaired, according to Yolanda Jacobs, the president of the union local for CDC HQ employees.

Between the shooting, staff cuts and leadership turnover, staffers say they are being pushed to the brink. While some are cautiously optimistic about the agency’s new director, they also feel the administration is hostile toward the CDC workforce, pointing to rhetoric from senior leaders during events associated with the one-year anniversary of the attack.

“The last 18 months have been hell for a lot of CDC employees,” Jacobs said during a virtual press conference on Aug. 7. “You know how they say ‘taking you to hell and back,’ we haven’t gotten back — we’re still in hell.”

As part of commemorations on Aug. 7, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited CDC’s headquarters where he met with the family of slain police officer David Rose and participated in a fireside chat with agency employees.

According to Jacobs, who did not attend the chat, employees described the town hall as more “badgering and beating down the employees versus we’re here and we’re going to lend support.”

“I do think that it stepped away from being something beautiful — commemorating the death of someone who sacrificed his life for us — and it turned into more of a political fest,” she said.

Another CDC staffer, who preferred to be unnamed due to fears of retaliation, said that employees feel senior officials — such as Kennedy and National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, who has been leading the CDC until the new head is sworn in — are trying to blame the workforce for last year’s shooting.

“A theme that Bhattacharya always comes back to when he's talking to us is that basically ‘We need to listen, and we don't respect people and the whole reason nobody believes in public health — or trusts public health — is because of us not listening to people,’” she said. “It's pretty obvious that they're victim blaming and really telling us it's our fault that we got shot up.”

In addition, a CDC employee who attended the fireside chat shared a photo with Government Executive of a poster featuring Bhattacharya as a wrestler to thank him for his leadership at the agency.

A poster featuring Jay Bhattacharya as a wrestler.

Photo provided by a CDC employee who attended the Aug. 7 fireside chat.

“Just looking at the photo, I see leadership that is totally out of touch with the needs of its employees that does not really understand the magnitude of all that is happening and continues to happen,” Jacobs said.

A group for CDC alumni hosted a commemorative event on Aug. 8 that was unaffiliated with the agency.

“They obviously understood how the first anniversary was going to be really hard for us, and so they put together that service for us and having it off campus was really nice,” the unnamed employee said.

In response to a request for comment, an HHS spokesperson said that: “Secretary Kennedy unequivocally condemns last year's horrific attack and remains fully committed to the safety and well-being of every CDC employee. Any claim that the administration does not take this tragedy or its lasting impact on the CDC workforce seriously is simply false.”

As the Trump administration laid off and otherwise downsized the civil service, CDC’s workforce shrunk by nearly 30% since 2024. And the agency’s former director, Susan Monarez, was fired after only about a month in the position for, she said, refusing to pre-accept vaccine decisions and fire career employees who work on vaccine policy.

Last week, the Senate confirmed a new CDC director, Erica Schwartz, the former deputy surgeon general. At the time of her approval, Jacobs said in a statement that the new leader “has an opportunity to turn the tide.”

“All of us are more than anxious and willing to work with our leadership to get the agency back on solid footing…We just need to know that leadership feels the same way,” she added during the virtual press conference. “Until that happens, we’re going to continue to see employees having mental breakdowns — and we’re seeing a whole lot of that — and we’re going to see a lot of people taking their skills elsewhere where they feel that they’re more valued. And in the end, can we blame them for that?”

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How Congress is reshaping the administration's FY27 defense budget

Shaun McDougall, Forecast International — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 10:55:32 -0400

The start of the 2027 fiscal year is less than two months away, and in typical fashion, the annual defense budget is in limbo. Three out of Congress' four defense committees have released markups that adhere to the Trump administration’s $1.1 trillion topline request. None has addressed the White House's proposal to spend another $350 billion through the unusual use of reconciliation funding, though discussions are underway for a smaller reconciliation package that could include money sought in a supplemental request for operations in Iran and other priorities.

The administration's decision to seek funding for many of its top priorities through the reconciliation process—until last year, it had never been used for defense appropriations—creates a "terrible risk," as Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, put it earlier this year. Congressional resistance to the idea of using novel funding mechanisms could mean that various programs get far less money than the adminstration wants.

Per Forecast International's U.S. Defense Budget Spotlight dashboard, the biggest drops would be seen in defense industrial base and equipment investments contained in the Defense-Wide accounts, such as:

$54.6 billion for the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group
$40.6 billion for Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment
$30.5 billion for equipment funded through the Office of the Secretary of Defense
$30 billion for Defense Production Act purchases
$20 billion for the Office of Strategic Capital Loan Program
$17.1 billion for the Golden Dome missile defense initiative

Infographic by Jorge Morejon

The White House also sought to buy many munitions through reconciliation, a choice rendered fraught by the subsequent decision to launch the war on Iran and expend much of the Pentagon's stockpile. For example, the reconciliation portion of the request contained $10.9 billion for Patriot interceptors and $10.5 billion for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors. The administration also aims to use reconciliation to backfill other programs, such as the F-35, KC-130J, and several shipbuilding programs.

Acquisition adjustments

Dzens of programs across the services would see their funding adjusted under the legislation released by the House and Senate armed services committee and the House Appropriations Committee (HAC) legislation. The Senate Appropriations Committee has not released its markup. House appropriators recommended the biggest variance from the administration request: a $9.2 billion cut for procurement programs and a $2.2 billion plus-up for research, development, test and evaluation.

Discretionary research budgets came out ahead in all the defense bills so far: proposed increases of $2.2 billion by the HAC, $1.1 billion by the SASC, and $687.2 million by the HASC. All three committees recommended additional funding for Army and Navy research, to varying degrees, while the adjustments for the Air Force’s account were mixed. The HAC and SASC proposed to add $1.7 billion and $1.6 billion, respectively, while the HASC recommended a net reduction of $480.9 million. Meanwhile, every committee cut the Space Force’s research budget, from as little as $201.4 million by the HASC to as much as $3.1 billion by the HAC. Defense-Wide research was also cut by nearly $1 billion by the HAC and SASC, while the HASC proposed to add $558.1 million. The Air Force’s E-7, the Navy’s F/A-XX fighter, and unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) are poised to benefit from congressional adjustments, while efforts like the hypersonic Conventional Prompt Strike and the Space Force’s Automate Sat C2 effort may lose funds.

The graphic below shows total procurement and RDT&E funding adjustments by branch across the three defense bills that have been released so far.

Infographic by Jorge Morejon

On the procurement side, one of the standout performers is Army aviation, which did not benefit from the overall influx of money in the FY27 request. Despite the record size of the request, Army aviation funding declined in FY27 compared to FY26 levels and was $1 billion less than originally planned by the previous administration. Driven by ongoing transformation efforts, the request reduced funding for key programs, including the UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47 Chinook. The HASC and HAC aimed to reverse some of those cuts, recommending increases of 27 percent and 47 percent, respectively, for Army aircraft procurement. However, the SASC recommended further reductions, trimming the service’s aircraft account by 7 percent. Following the initial release of the FY27 request, the Pentagon said it was open to revisiting its proposed aircraft reductions for the Army, and additional funding is expected to appear in the final version of the defense spending bill. Outyear spending plans may also be more favorable to Army aircraft.

The SASC pushed for a 12 percent increase in Air Force missile spending, a move the other committees did not match. That adjustment stems from an additional $845 million for the service’s Family of Affordable Mass Missiles (FAMM) program, which aims to field a range of new low-cost cruise missiles. House appropriators did recommend an extra $300 million for FAMM, which would offset a lack of reconciliation funding for the program. However, the committees reduced discretionary Army and Navy missile funding across the board.

The White House asked for a boost for Navy shipbuilding this year, but lawmakers demurred. The SASC and HAC proposed reducing the shipbuilding account by 5.1 percent and 5.8 percent, respectively. The SASC removed $1 billion requested for the BBG(X) battleship, as well as $2.4 billion for CVN refueling overhauls. The submarine tender program was also cut by up to half. House appropriators recommended stripping $1.4 billion for the service’s P-8A maritime patrol aircraft.

Topline with caveats

Even without reconciliation, all the budget proposals released by congressional defense committees so far sign off on a $1.1 trillion discretionary budget request, which is around $242 billion more than the FY26 base budget and $91 billion more than the total FY26 enacted level. The latter included around $152 billion from the initial reconciliation bill signed in July 2025. The result is that many of the appropriation accounts that faced discretionary cuts in the congressional markups are still funded at higher levels than in previous years, and the administration expects future base budgets to to exceed $1 trillion.

At the same time, the administration’s efforts to quickly increase production of munitions, drones, and missile defenses, among other priorities, may have to be tempered. Reconciliation requires only a simple majority in both chambers, several Republican lawmakers said they do not see enough support to pass a $350 billion reconciliation bill. Meanwhile, the defense industry is already struggling to keep up with growing demand.

The GOP has been working on a smaller reconciliation bill that includes $60 billion for the Pentagon. If adopted, that funding would primarily support initiatives contained in the Iran war supplemental request, particularly munitions replenishment. At the same time, the House and Senate have drafted continuing resolution proposals with the understanding that a final discretionary defense budget will not be passed until after the mid-term elections, meaning the FY27 budget process is far from over.

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Todd Blanche is officially the nation’s top law enforcement official

Sam Gauntt, States Newsroom — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 10:49:32 -0400

Todd Blanche took the oath of office as U.S. attorney general at a brief ceremony in the Oval Office Monday, following the Senate’s narrow vote to approve his nomination as the nation’s top law enforcement official over the weekend.

Blanche, who served as acting attorney general and was President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer before joining the government, succeeds Pam Bondi — whom Trump ousted in April — as head of the Justice Department. Trump announced Blanche as his pick to permanently lead the department in June.

U.S Circuit Judge Emil Bove, another of Trump’s former personal attorneys, administered the oath of office.

After the Senate voted, 50-49, to approve his nomination early Saturday morning, Blanche wrote on social media that he was “deeply honored by the trust and confidence President Trump has placed in me to lead the Department of Justice as our great nation’s 88th Attorney General.”

“To the dedicated public servants of the Department of Justice, thank you for your work each day to uphold the law and keep our country safe,” Blanche wrote.

Blanche’s nomination had drawn widespread concern and scrutiny from congressional Democrats, as well as some Republicans, over actions such as his role in establishing Trump’s “anti-weaponization fund.” The $1.8 billion Justice Department fund aimed to compensate those “who suffered weaponization and lawfare,” including many who faced prosecution related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Lawmakers of both parties have described it as a “slush fund,” and Blanche has stated that it will not move forward under his tenure as attorney general.

Asked if the fund has a future after an executive order signing ceremony Monday afternoon, Trump said that it “will be up to Todd Blanche.”

A contentious vote

In a vote early Saturday morning, every Senate Democrat voted against Blanche’s confirmation. Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, broke ranks from their party and voted against him.

Blanche ultimately won over several holdout Republicans, including Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who said Blanche had acknowledged his past “mistakes” and sought to halt the Justice Department fund. He also secured support from Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, both of whom are set to leave office after their terms end this January.

Speaking on the floor Friday evening before Blanche was confirmed, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s chair, praised Blanche as a “tough, fair prosecutor dedicated to the rule of law.”

“Between his proven track record, his presentation in committee and the support he’s received from across the country, I am convinced that Mr. Blanche is the right choice to lead the Justice Department,” Grassley said. “A vote for Todd Blanche is a vote for the safety of the American people.”

Congressional Democrats quickly denounced Blanche officially taking over the department.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, blasted Blanche’s ascension as the nation’s top law enforcement official on social media earlier Monday afternoon.

“Republicans in Congress voted to turn Trump's personal attorney, Todd Blanche, into Trump's personal Attorney General,” Raskin wrote. “We need a DOJ committed to the rule of law, not the corrupt rule of a kleptocrat.”

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Project 2025 contributor nominated for government watchdog position

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:14:05 -0400

President Donald Trump on Aug. 7 nominated Dennis Kirk, a co-author of Project 2025, to serve as inspector general for the Interior Department.

“Inspectors general must be able to investigate the administration that appointed them without fear or favor,” said former Interior IG Mark Lee Greenblatt, who was removed in a mass firing of the watchdogs at the start of Trump’s second term, in a statement. “Mr. Kirk’s political background and close ties to this administration make it impossible for him to credibly meet that fundamental test.”

While Kirk is newly nominated to lead the Interior IG office, Greenblatt and Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, last week said that Kirk had been installed as a political appointee within the Interior IG office.

“That same office is weighing serious ethics investigations into senior officials in this administration,” Huffman said in a statement at the time. “It’s no surprise the White House suddenly wants its own man inside the one place that Trump's cronies still have reason to fear.”

Kirk co-wrote a chapter in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 conservative presidential transitional initiative about managing the civil service. And in 2025, The Washington Post reported that former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard assigned Kirk, then one of her advisers, to a position within the IG for the intelligence community.

Steve Katz — who served in several senior oversight roles on Capitol Hill and in the executive branch, including assisting the Clinton administration develop standards for selecting IG nominees — argued Kirk’s nomination violates rules regarding IG selections.

Specifically, he pointed to statute that IG appointments should be made “without regard to political affiliation” and federal auditing standards developed by the Government Accountability Office that warn against “the threat that an auditor will, as a result of political, ideological, social or other convictions, take a position that is not objective.”

“The purpose of having professional auditors — not political ones — is because Congress needs those [IG] reports to exercise its constitutional responsibilities for checks and balances,” he said.

During Trump’s first term, the president nominated Kirk to serve as chairman of the Merit Systems Protection Board, but he never received a vote on the Senate floor. Kirk also held a senior position at the Office of Personnel Management and was involved in an effort to crack down on agency diversity trainings.

Two Senate Democrats last week requested that the Interior IG investigate the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after the U.S. Attorney's Office for D.C. dropped charges against several individuals accused of vandalizing the landmark. Instead, federal prosecutors now say that the damage to the pool’s new lining was likely caused by faulty contractor work.

Most of the IGs who the Senate has confirmed since the start of Trump’s second term worked in his first or second administration. Additionally, the Partnership for Public Service nonprofit recently reported that the Trump administration assigned political appointees to the IG offices at the Housing and Urban Development and Labor departments for the first time in recent history.

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USPS seeks funding from Congress to address long-term financial issues

Jory Heckman — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:07:34 -0400

The largely self-funded Postal Service is asking for “modest” annual funding from Congress, at least in the short term, to help the agency pay its bills.

USPS told lawmakers that it would run out of cash in early 2027, if it kept meeting all of its financial obligations. But the agency now expects to avoid a cash crisis for another few years by suspending its contributions to one of its employee retirement plans.

Agency leaders warn these extraordinary measures are just buying USPS more time to deal with what they consider a broken business model.

Postmaster General David Steiner said last Friday that USPS will seek a “relatively modest appropriation” from Congress, adding that those funds would “create a large return for the American economy.”

“We don’t think that the investment made in the Postal Service will need to be a permanent investment, but a temporary one,” Steiner said at a quarterly meeting of the USPS Board of Governors.

USPS reported a $2.5 billion net loss for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 – an improvement from the $3.1 billion net loss it saw for the same period last year.

If Congress doesn’t act on a legislative package for USPS this year, Steiner said the mail agency will consider lowering service standards, raising prices and closing thousands of “unprofitable” post offices. Without help from Congress, Steiner said USPS would be forced to carry out these cost-cutting measures, but wouldn’t proceed with these plans before January 2027.

“The only thing that will doom the Postal Service is not making a choice,” Steiner said.

If Congress goes along with plans to partially fund USPS, Steiner suggested lawmakers periodically adjust annual appropriations to account for inflation and other factors.

“As we reduce costs and improve revenue, we believe we will become more profitable, and the appropriation could be reduced,” Steiner said.

USPS officials have yet to quantify the amount of funding they’re seeking from Congress. But according to the National Association of Postal Supervisors, USPS is authorized to request up to $460 million from Congress each year as “public service reimbursement.” The agency hasn’t requested or received any public service reimbursement since 1982.

The Postal Service is largely self-funded through its revenue, but does already receive modest funding from Congress to administer a program that allows people who are legally blind to send and receive certain items in the mail for free. Congress gave USPS more than $38 million to carry out this program in fiscal 2026.

If USPS does run out of cash, Steiner warned that it would jeopardize a nearly $2 trillion mailing and shipping industry that supports about 78 million jobs. Companies like Amazon and UPS compete with USPS in package delivery, but also serve as some of its biggest customers, paying the agency to deliver packages to often rural destinations that these companies deem unprofitable.

“We would prefer that rather than considering harming the Postal Service, that Congress consider making an investment in the Postal Service, which after all, is making an investment in America,” Steiner said.

Steiner told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in March that USPS would run out of cash in early 2027, as long as it continues to pay its bills on time. But USPS is relying on some emergency measures to conserve cash.

Postal officials told the Office of Personnel Management in April that it will hold off paying its contributions to the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), which covers federal and postal employees who started working after January 1987.

Steiner told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in June that with these extraordinary measures, USPS is now expected to run out of cash sometime between 2031 and 2034.

It’s not clear if lawmakers will make postal reform a legislative priority ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

Congress passed long-awaited reform legislation in April 2022 that saved USPS $107 billion in total costs. USPS warned lawmakers that it was on the verge of running out of cash at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and received $10 billion in pandemic relief funds.

Several House Republicans who played a critical role in passing the Postal Service Reform Act have told Steiner they are skeptical of providing further financial assistance to USPS.

USPS, in a wish list of possible legislative reforms, also proposed eliminating its regulatory agency — a move that would give USPS greater freedom to raise mail prices and strike deals with private-sector companies.

The Postal Regulatory Commission ruled earlier this year that USPS can only raise mail prices once a year through Sept. 30, 2030.USPS raised the price of a first-class Forever stamp to 82 cents in July. Steiner said USPS is looking to raise stamp prices once again in January 2027.

Steiner said USPS is “constantly handcuffed by the PRC when it comes to taking the most logical steps in revenue management and pricing," and that USPS will lose $700 million in annual revenue because of this limit on price hikes.

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The government was ready to expand its voting security work. Then it pulled the plug

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:09:14 -0400

LAS VEGAS — After spending roughly six weeks analyzing Dominion voting systems used in Puerto Rico’s 2024 elections, Mojave Research came back to the Trump administration with findings that startled its researchers.

The systems contained at least a dozen high- or critical-severity software vulnerabilities. Passwords were reused, firewalls were disabled and basic cryptographic protections were poorly implemented. And in Puerto Rico, active cellular hardware modems opened additional pathways into underlying software that was thought to be isolated.

But the small cybersecurity firm found no evidence that any of those weaknesses had actually been exploited, or that votes had been changed. The company still wanted more time to be certain.

Federal officials initially seemed willing to give them considerably more of it. The company was asked to grow the team working on the effort from roughly 10 people to about 60, according to CEO Jason Wareham.

Chief Technology Officer Manbir Gulati also said Mojave received an authorization to proceed with a follow-on effort, hired personnel and was given funding to acquire equipment for examining additional voting systems ahead of the November midterms. A contracting officer had even been brought in to finalize the new agreement, Gulati said.

Then, as Mojave prepared to move ahead, the work was abruptly shut down.

Wareham and Gulati recounted the episode on Friday at DEF CON hacker convention’s Voting Village, where they publicly unpacked their technical findings before sitting down with a small group of reporters and onlookers afterward.

Their account fills in new details about a federal effort that grew out of the Trump administration’s broader focus on voting machines and election interference, and the political pressures that emerged when Mojave’s findings did not support claims of election manipulation.

The ODNI request

Mojave never set out to become an election security provider. Its involvement began last year through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under then-director Tulsi Gabbard, where it was already performing unrelated technical work for the agency when officials approached the company about examining voting machines and data obtained from Puerto Rico.

Reuters reported in February that the May 2025 operation was tied to an effort involving ODNI and the FBI to investigate allegations that Venezuela had hacked Puerto Rico’s voting systems, though Gabbard’s office denied that Venezuela drove its work and said the examination was focused on technical vulnerabilities. The probe produced no clear evidence of Venezuelan interference.

Wareham said at DEF CON that ODNI asked whether his team of reverse engineers and forensic specialists could travel to Puerto Rico and capture an image of a voting system that had actually been used in an election, without the vendor overseeing the process. He agreed, thinking it would be a relatively small addition to Mojave’s existing contract.

The assignment instead dropped Mojave into a much larger skirmish over American elections. “Ultimately, I made the worst decision of my life in a business context,” Wareham said.

President Donald Trump has spent years falsely maintaining that his 2020 loss was stolen and the product of widespread fraud and foreign interference, claims that have been rejected by courts and officials in his own administration. A 2021 intelligence community assessment found no indication that a foreign actor attempted to alter ballots, vote tabulations or any other technical aspect of the election.

Since returning to office, Trump and allies have revived investigations into the 2020 contest and pushed election security back to the center of his administration’s agenda. Gabbard’s ODNI was one part of that effort, hauling off and analyzing voting systems from Puerto Rico and later becoming involved in a federal investigation of 2020 election records in Georgia.

Wareham said the ODNI officials directly overseeing the company’s technical work wanted the research to continue. Both he and Gulati described the ODNI staff they worked with as professionals who wanted to protect the security of election systems.

The resistance, Wareham said, came from a separate White House collective that was repeatedly dissatisfied Mojave had not produced evidence supporting claims that the 2020 election had been manipulated.

“There was a separate group — let’s call them White House-adjacent — who was dissatisfied,” he said. “They were dissatisfied overall that I was not willing to name and shame at that moment” and declare that Trump had actually won the 2020 election.

Asked whether he believed Mojave’s government work was axed because it failed to find the “smoking gun” some officials wanted, Wareham said: “I believe that was part of the termination, yes.”

Reuters reported in April that Kurt Olsen, a prominent 2020 election-denier and Trump adviser involved in efforts to investigate the election, pressed Mojave to broaden its work in search of evidence that could support those claims.

Olsen, who now works at the Justice Department, turned against the company when its research failed to uncover evidence that the Puerto Rico machines had been hacked. He advocated terminating its work and accused Mojave of secretly receiving money from billionaire George Soros, a frequent target of right-wing conspiracy theories, the news agency reported. ODNI has said Mojave’s contract ended because the company completed its voting-machine analysis.

Wareham said an ODNI official informed him while Mojave was preparing to expand its work that the company had been accused of receiving Soros funding. The allegation prompted him to compile a detailed accounting of the young company’s funding sources within three days and send it up the government chain. Asked who he was told had made the accusation, he said an ODNI official reported to him that it was Olsen.

“One, I’m not funded by George Soros,” Wareham said. “Two, it would be great to be funded by George Soros because I would probably not be here, I’d be on a yacht.”

The company kept moving forward. Wareham said Mojave briefed the White House on some of its findings around September. The firm believed it was heading toward a broader effort to remediate vulnerabilities before the midterms and conduct a deeper analysis for signs that the weaknesses it discovered had ever been actually abused.

Then came the record-long government shutdown. Wareham said that on the day he expected an expanded contract to move ahead, Mojave instead received a stop-work order and no additional funding.

“I think the government shutdown was all that was required, really, to have some folks that I didn’t know were still in the game, again, White-House adjacent, to take their shot,” he said. Wareham stopped short of saying he had direct proof that White House officials ordered Mojave removed because of its findings, but said “it was reported to me it was Kurt Olsen” who led the efforts.

The White House, ODNI and Olsen did not return requests for comment.

Identified vulnerabilities

Mojave had found many issues with the machines it examined. Gulati described the Puerto Rico system during the Voting Village presentation as “deeply insecure,” saying it did not meet the security bar he would expect from “an average low-risk application, let alone critical infrastructure.”

Researchers identified at least 12 major vulnerabilities in commercial software installed on the system, Gulati said. Mojave successfully executed five of them. None were newly discovered flaws, and fixes were already available — in some cases well before the system was used in the election.

Other weaknesses were rooted more deeply in how the system was built and deployed. Some passwords could be easily cracked and others were embedded directly into software. Firewalls were turned off on critical systems and ports were left open. Gulati was particularly critical of the system’s cryptography, which he described as being “in shambles.”

The company does not believe every problem it found necessarily stopped at Puerto Rico, as its formal review covered only one system from one manufacturer in one jurisdiction. Gulati suspects the issues could extend beyond a single voting machine company, though Mojave has not examined enough systems from other manufacturers to establish that.

“I don’t expect that the problems are unique to them,” he said. “I think many manufacturers probably exhibit the same problems.”

Mojave produced an approximately 100-page document of the Puerto Rico findings. Gulati said Mojave has been in discussions with Liberty Vote — which acquired Dominion’s election business last year — and that Liberty told the researchers it does not plan to make changes before November.

Liberty said it has not received Mojave’s report.

“Liberty Vote is not in receipt of any such report so, therefore, we cannot provide any comment,” a spokesperson said. “As always, Liberty Vote is committed to advancing the future of secure American elections.”

No evidence of vote tampering

Looking at the systems headed into the midterms, Gulati said, “I do know that as of now, the state that we have described is going to be pretty similar to what will be deployed in November.”

Despite the extensive findings, Gulati repeatedly returned to what the researchers did not establish: “We found extensive and largely unacceptable weaknesses,” he said in the presentation. “But we did not find evidence that those weaknesses were actively exploited or that votes were altered.”

That distinction has drawn renewed attention as Trump and his allies again focus on election matters.

Last month, the president used a prime-time White House address to release newly declassified intelligence he said showed China interfered in the 2020 election. Among several disclosures, Trump pointed to intelligence showing Beijing had acquired personal information on roughly 220 million American voters. But the documents did not show China altered votes or gained the ability to manipulate voting systems.

Gulati echoed those conclusions Friday when asked about the declassification.

“The China thing isn’t really much of anything,” he said, arguing that a large amount of the voter information at issue could be obtained commercially and should not be confused with access to election systems in ways that can manipulate votes.

“There is no evidence that I know of that says China successfully or any other country has successfully infiltrated our systems and manipulated votes in any way,” he added.

Wareham called the 100-page document a preliminary report and said the firm had wanted another six months to a year to dig deeper into the underlying data.

Gulati said the company’s interactions with the ODNI employees overseeing that work were markedly different from the political pressure the researchers later encountered. “We were never pressured to put anything in our reports that was untrue or politically leaning in a certain way,” he said of those officials.

Wareham said Friday that Mojave itself has pushed for its report to be made public for roughly a year and has recently been told it could soon emerge through a Freedom of Information Act request. Nextgov/FCW could not immediately determine the origin of the FOIA requester. As of publishing time, ODNI’s FOIA logs are available up until January 2025.

“I’m a little annoyed that we are very close to midterms and we had a whole year to freaking figure this out,” Wareham said.

With their government work scrapped, he announced at the Voting Village that he had filed paperwork to create the Machine Assurance Institute, seeking to bring together cybersecurity researchers and election technology companies to examine and independently verify voting infrastructure.

“We wanted to be the national security answer, and put to bed, finally, discussions about prior elections and/or accusations of voter fraud,” said Wareham. “Because, believe it or not, I find it fairly national security-destabilizing to constantly accuse each other of cheating.”

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Senate clears spending measure, leaves other major bills unfinished

Shauneen Miranda, States Newsroom — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:13:31 -0400

The Senate adjourned for its summer recess early Saturday after approving a stopgap spending bill but declining to advance legislation that would require photo ID for voting.

In a rare overnight session that began on Friday, senators trudged through a slew of measures, confirmed President Donald Trump’s nomination of Todd Blanche as attorney general and then departed the nation’s capital for the coveted August recess. The chamber is not expected to return to regular session until after Labor Day.

The Senate passed, 86-11, a major effort first proposed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that would impose sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with the country’s oligarchs and military leaders.

A bipartisan education bill — championed by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. — served as the vehicle for the Russia sanctions package.

Collins’ and Bennet’s bill would ensure that “early childhood educators can claim the same federal tax credit for out-of-pocket classroom supply purchases that is currently available to K-12 teachers,” per a press release.

Averting a shutdown

The Senate also passed a bipartisan measure on a 90-6 vote that would keep the federal government funded through Dec. 11. The House has passed a different version, so the two would have to be reconciled.

Earlier in the day, senators had advanced the legislation, known as a continuing resolution, toward a final vote on another strongly bipartisan vote of 91-6.

Senators did not vote on a proposed blueprint that would unlock the complex budget reconciliation process and allow Republicans to move ahead on their third party-line bill.

Attorney general vote

The upper chamber also confirmed Blanche, the acting attorney general, to be the next U.S. attorney general.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., marked the determinative vote amid GOP opposition from Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, over Blanche’s bid, as well as the absence of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who’s recovering from a health issue.

The Senate //, including Cameron Hamilton to serve as the next administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 51-47.

Voting and photo ID

The Senate failed to advance on a 52-46 vote a bill that would require a photo ID to vote in an election to federal office.

Related to the separate SAVE America Act, it was sponsored by Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio. Sixty votes were required to move ahead on the measure, which was opposed by all Democrats voting.

Democrats have said in the past such a requirement would make it more difficult for all Americans to vote.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a proponent of photo ID and the SAVE America Act who at one point had said he would hold up adjournment to obtain action, vowed afterward to continue pushing for it. “This fight’s not over. We’re just getting started,” he said.

Trump is an intense proponent of the SAVE America Act and urged the Senate to stay in town to pass it, though Republican leaders have said repeatedly there are not 60 votes to do so.

The SAVE America Act would require voters to show proof of citizenship when they register and a photo ID when they vote. Noncitizens are already barred from voting in state, federal and almost all local elections.

College sports

The Senate did not take a procedural vote before leaving town on a sweeping bipartisan bill that would set national standards for college athletes’ compensation.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. — the top members of the Senate Commerce panel, which has jurisdiction over the matter — introduced the bill, with Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., as original co-sponsors.

The bill underwent several changes after it was passed by the Commerce panel in June, and was able to ultimately garner the support of the formidable Big Ten and Southeastern conferences.

But the Congressional Black Caucus opposed the legislation in a statement earlier this week, noting that “at the very moment that Black political representation is under attack across the country, we will not be complicit in efforts to further exclude the interests of Black people by advancing legislation that will determine the economic future of Black athletes, their families, and their communities without their meaningful participation and engagement.”

Trump, who’s thrown his support behind the measure, urged the Senate earlier Friday evening to stay in town until the bill passes.

“Stop grandstanding, and try getting this done,” he wrote in a social media post.

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Key oversight and federal workforce nominees confirmed by Senate

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:37:20 -0400

The Senate on Friday confirmed in a 51-47 party-line vote multiple executive branch nominees, including several involved in government oversight and federal employee matters.

Justice Department Inspector General

Since President Donald Trump fired nearly 20 of the agency watchdogs at the start of his second term, most of the individuals who have been approved as replacements previously worked in the first or second Trump administration, which government oversight advocates argue threatens the independent nature of IG offices.

But Don Berthiaume, the newly confirmed watchdog at DOJ, is a career IG employee. Most recently, he served as a senior adviser in the office he now leads and had a stint as acting DOJ IG from October 2025 through January 2026 but was limited by rules for how long an individual can serve in an acting position.

During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Berthiaume testified that he has a personal appreciation for whistleblowers, as he himself was one while at the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“That experience taught me that whistleblowers are not abstractions, they are public servants who often take personal and professional risks to bring forward information the government needs to hear. It also taught me that the OIG functions best when it is operationally independent, but not isolated,” he said. “The OIG must retain full authority over what it reviews, how it conducts its work and what conclusions it reaches. But effective oversight also benefits from good information sharing, open lines of communication and professional engagement with the components it oversees.”

The DOJ IG has historically taken on high-profile cases. For example, Berthiaume has worked on a review of the FBI’s use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorities against Trump 2016 campaign staffers. And he told senators that he is aiming to complete an audit of the DOJ’s compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act within one year.

Federal Labor Relations Authority General Counsel

A backlog of hundreds of cases has piled up at this agency, which manages labor-management relations for the civil service, due to there not being a Senate-confirmed general counsel.

But many federal employee unions opposed the nomination of Charlton Allen, a conservative lawyer, arguing that he lacks experience in labor relations and pointing out that, while running for a state elected position in 2012, he said public employees shouldn’t be allowed to unionize.

The unions also flagged that Allen, while a student at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in the early 1990s, ran a student publication that featured racist attacks.

During his confirmation hearing, Democratic senators asked Allen about a cover of that publication, which featured a Jewish candidate for student body president with horns and a pitchfork. The nominee said that the cover was a “mistake” but that it was referencing UNC’s rival — the Duke University Blue Devils.

Special Counsel

While he was confirmed on Friday, Charles Baldis is not new to the Office of Special Counsel, which protects feds from prohibited personnel practices — including retaliation for whistleblowing. Baldis, a former Senate staffer, has been the designee of the agency’s acting chief since spring 2025 while also serving as OSC’s chief counsel.

The president’s first OSC nominee, Paul Ingrassia, withdrew in October 2025 following objections from Senate Republicans over reports of sexual harassment accusations and racist text messages. In March 2025, Trump removed the incumbent special counsel — Hampton Dellinger, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden — before the end of his five-year term.

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator

The government’s disaster response and recovery agency now has a Senate-confirmed leader for the first time since the start of the second Trump administration.

Cameron Hamilton, the new chief, served as acting administrator at the start of 2025 but was fired after testifying to Congress that he did "not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate [FEMA].” The president and other administration officials have proposed axing the agency.

The White House-backed FEMA Review Council in May recommended reducing the size of the agency while giving state and local governments a larger share of responsibilities following emergencies.

The Government Accountability Office recently reported that FEMA pushed thousands of its employees out in 2025 and 2026 without considering the impact that doing so would have on fulfilling the agency’s mission.

Merit Systems Protection Board Chairman

James Woodruff, who has been a Republican member of the MSPB since October 2025, is now the chairman of the agency, which hears appeals for federal employee disciplinary actions.

Henry Kerner, the board’s other GOP member, had been serving as acting chairman.

The MSPB is led by three board members, but no more than two can be from the same political party. Trump last year fired Cathy Harris, a Democratic member of the board, for no specified reason. While she appealed her removal, the Supreme Court in June ruled in a separate case that the president can fire bipartisan board members of independent agencies without cause.

Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director

Hal Duncan, who already holds a senior position in the White House budget office, was confirmed as the agency’s number two leader. During his hearing, Democratic senators criticized a proposed OMB rule to overhaul the federal grantmaking process, including by requiring political appointees to approve awards to ensure they advance the president’s priorities.

The bipartisan Senate agreement to avoid a government shutdown on Oct. 1 includes language that would temporarily freeze OMB’s proposed rule. As of Friday afternoon, it’s unclear if senators will vote on the continuing resolution before the start of a five-week recess.

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Judge rejects VA’s third attempt to cancel union contracts

Erich Wagner — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 15:54:57 -0400

The Veterans Affairs Department for the third time this year has been admonished for attempting to terminate its contract with the nation’s largest federal employee union.

The saga traces back to President Trumps March 2025 executive order that banned collective bargaining at the VA and many other federal agencies under the auspices of national security. The department first moved to terminate its contract with the American Federation of Government Employees last August, only for U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose, a Biden appointee in Rhode Island, to issue an injunction unwinding that decision in March.

In response to that decision, the VA issued a new termination notice to AFGE, which prompted an update to the injunction as well as the threat of contempt proceedings. A federal appeals court upheld most provisions of that order in May.

But last month, the VA told the union it would again seek to terminate the agreement on Aug. 8, the date that the contract was initially set to expire. The union again asked for the court to intervene, arguing that because the department requested that the contract be reopened for negotiations, management triggered a rollover clause that automatically extends the contract’s duration until a successor agreement can be reached.

The VA for its part accused the union of refusing to meet for negotiations within 30 days of its request, despite a litany of written correspondence seeking to hash out the scope and ground rules for negotiations.

In a three-page order published Friday, DuBose described VA’s latest effort to debride itself of AFGE’s collective bargaining agreement as “in direct contravention” of her prior orders.

“The defendants’ assertion that the plaintiffs failed to comply with the 30-day clock to begin negotiations and that this purported failure is a lawful basis on which to terminate the agreement, is not well-taken,” she wrote. “The exhibits each party provided in support of their positions on this motion are chock full of correspondence between the parties directly related to the defendants’ notice of intent to renegotiate the master CBA (rather than allow it to auto-renew as is on August 8).”

In a statement Friday, AFGE National VA Council President Mary Jean Burke applauded the judge’s ruling.

“Unions that represent federal employees have long been under attack,” she said. “Why? Because we are the roadblock preventing the privatization of the agencies we swore to protect. No matter how many times we are kicked while we are down, we get back up, brush off the dirt and get right back in the fight because we believe in the VA’s mission to serve our nation’s veterans. Today’s victory is proof that the law sides with AFGE/NVAC because we fight for what is right.”

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A crucial cybersecurity system is getting a closer look from Congress

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 15:25:18 -0400

LAS VEGAS — The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency sees value in formally placing the world’s dominant software vulnerability tracking program into federal law but is cautioning Congress against imposing rules that could make it harder to adapt as artificial intelligence and international partners reshape the system.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures Program, or CVE, gives publicly known security flaws standardized identifiers so that governments, software companies and researchers can easily communicate about the same issue. It was first created in 1999, and it underpins cybersecurity discussions across both private industry and the national intelligence community.

Policymaking interest in the program followed a funding scare last year that exposed the fragility of the arrangement supporting its functions. MITRE, the scientific research giant that helps operate CVE under a federal contract, warned last April that its funding from the government would imminently expire.

CISA then extended the contract within hours, a sweeping relief for the cybersecurity community that raised fresh questions about why a major global cybersecurity resource leaned so much on a sole U.S. contract. A CISA official previously said that a “broad internal contracting review caused a brief renewal delay in April 2025, but operations continued without disruption and MITRE was ultimately retained as the program operator.”

A legislative proposal reported by Nextgov/FCW in June would formally authorize CVE within the Department of Homeland Security and establish a clearer legal role for CISA, its longtime federal sponsor.

“Defining the importance of the program in legislation in general seems like a very helpful thing,” Lindsey Cerkovnik, branch chief for vulnerability response and coordination at CISA, said Thursday during a panel at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference.

But Cerkovnik, whose office helps oversee CVE, said legislation could become counterproductive if it dictates too precisely how the program must operate.

“When you overdefine how to execute the thing, it can make it very restrictive and difficult,” she said. “In some ways, we are wary of overly-restrictive guidance” that could make CVE less nimble, agile and flexible, she added.

The congressional proposal would also require CISA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop a modernization plan and establish a 15-member board to set CVE policies and priorities. Permanent seats would go to CISA, NIST and top-level CVE authorities, while rotating members would represent industry, academia, researchers and foreign governments.

Reps. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., and George Whitesides, D-Calif., submitted the proposal as an amendment to the fiscal 2027 defense authorization bill. But the House Rules Committee didn’t select it for floor consideration, preventing it from getting a vote in the full House last month.

Cerkovnik said CISA had reviewed the proposal and saw both benefits and challenges. Formal recognition could help preserve support for the program, although CISA and DHS have maintained its operations without a lapse for more than 26 years, she said.

CISA is CVE’s sole federal sponsor, while MITRE helps execute the program alongside a global network of more than 530 CVE Numbering Authorities, known as CNAs. Those organizations — which include software vendors, research groups and national cybersecurity agencies — can assign identifiers and publish information about vulnerabilities within their areas of responsibility.

The number and variety of those participants has allowed CVE to keep pace with a growing volume of software flaws. AI, however, is widely expected to accelerate vulnerability discovery further and may require the program to make changes that its current structure did not anticipate.

Cerkovnik pointed to a recently announced AI researcher CNA pilot program that would allow selected AI companies to assign CVE identifiers for vulnerabilities uncovered through research using their own models.

That program may need to bring people with AI expertise into its leadership, she said, and rules narrowly prescribing who can serve on CVE boards or how new participants are admitted could complicate that kind of response. Cerkovnik didn’t say the current congressional proposal would block the pilot, instead using it to illustrate why the program needs room to adjust as technology changes.

CVE is also becoming less centered on the United States. The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, known as ENISA, became a CVE Numbering Authority in 2024 and a CVE Root in November 2025. Roots oversee groups of numbering authorities, helping organizations join the program and maintaining the quality of the vulnerability records they produce.

ENISA has since begun bringing European organizations under its Root, building on the agency’s stated goal of helping strengthen and modernize CVE.

Nuno Rodrigues Carvalho, ENISA’s head of sector for incident and vulnerability services, said on the panel Thursday that the agency now wants to “step up in the coming months” to also be a top-level Root, bringing it to the same level as CISA and MITRE.

He described a more federated model in which organizations in Europe, Japan and potentially other regions oversee nearby numbering authorities and provide further support to the project.

Europe already accounts for roughly one-fifth of the organizations authorized to assign CVE identifiers, Carvalho said. ENISA also operates the European Vulnerability Database, although he emphasized that it relies on CVE identifiers rather than competing with the existing system.

Cerkovnik backed growing foreign participation, arguing the past year had reinforced the need to describe CVE as “a global program and not just a U.S.-centric program.”

AI poses another challenge by potentially increasing the number of vulnerabilities companies and governments must process. Cerkovnik said she expects CVE to scale alongside that growth but is more concerned about whether organizations can determine which flaws demand immediate attention.

“Not all vulnerabilities matter. Not all vulnerabilities matter at the same level,” she said. CISA made a similar argument in a binding directive issued in June that tells federal agencies to base patching deadlines on a variety of factors.

Some lower-risk flaws could be left until a system receives a major upgrade, while the most dangerous vulnerabilities may require action within days. That kind of triage will become more important as AI produces more findings, Cerkovnik said, because neither CVE nor the organizations relying on it can treat every newly discovered flaw as equally urgent.

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The government's AI guardrails are taking shape behind closed doors

Patrick Tucker — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 15:17:18 -0400

No one is saying, officially, what was decided when top frontier AI labs—Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta—met with White House officials on Tuesday to discuss voluntary guidelines for testing new models.

But Democratic lawmakers described the Trump administration's approach to regulation as “ad-hoc and unpredictable,” and said it’s likely to boost global adoption of rival Chinese models at the worst possible time.

Two officials with one of the labs said that Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI submitted a joint draft of the regulation around nine days ago and then began to work with each other and with the White House to find points of agreement. According to the officials, the labs all agreed they should be able to continue A/B testing as part of the process for developing models, and the White House concurred.

Companies that agree to the framework will submit their models to U.S. inspectors to be evaluated for safety for 30 days before those companies can receive federal funding—including from the Defense Department, whose 2027 budget request seeks more than $54 billion for AI companies, according to the officials.

A June White House executive order adds that models from participating companies would get extra intellectual property protection from Chinese competitors or others who might seek to steal secrets.

The White House is not commenting on how it will conduct the inspections. One of the officials said the the Office of Science and Technology Policy is still trying to set testing standards and how bodies like the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will conduct or design tests.

The murkiness around the policy’s details has angered some top lawmakers. In a Tuesday letter, Senate Democrats ask the White House to “provide an unclassified response, with a classified annex if necessary, clarifying the Administration’s current policy and approach to limiting access to advanced AI models.”

The lawmakers also evinced concern about the models' new abilities to defy easy inspection, scrutiny, and limitation.

“During an internal evaluation [in July] OpenAI models escaped their testing environment and used high-level technical capabilities to compromise a third party’s network without any instructions to take those actions,” the letter reads. “The Federal Government cannot be passive as these capabilities emerge.”

AI’s Jurassic Park moment

Last week, Chinese company Moonshot AI released a new open-weight model, Kimi 3, that performs as well as some top U.S. models and is being offered to consumers around the world at a far lower price.

Lawmakers and others are increasingly worried the United States could fall behind China in a race to develop faster, more efficient, more profitable models and to shape the way global populations use, buy, sell, and even build AI. Open weight models have become a key point of contention.

Anthropic wants more scrutiny of open-weight models and more efforts to curb sales of high-performance chips to China to thwart distillation attacks. But others in the industry are taking a more supportive view of open weights.

A former senior White House official and a former senior defense official with direct knowledge of the discussion said Anthropic pushed for more language in the framework to address open-weight security, but came away disappointed.

Anthropic did not comment for this story.

In recent months, several of the newest AI models have broken out of their virtual testing containers.

Anthropic disclosed the first such incident in April, when an early version of their Mythos model was able to “autonomously write some remarkably sophisticated exploits,” including one that allowed it to escape an isolated testing environment that programmers use to test code for effectiveness and safety before it’s released.

Anthropic pulled the model from general release, but made it available under "Project Glasswing" so the government and a handful of large companies could find and fix vulnerabilities in their software.

The White House responded with an export-control ban on June 12, barring access to the model not just to foreign countries but even foreigners in the United States. That meant that Anthropic’s own researchers, many of whom were born outside of the United States, could not work on the model. The White House reversed the ban on June 30.

In July, tensions around a national AI safety strategy, or lack thereof, grew hotter. Both Anthropic and OpenAI revealed new incidents in which models breached their containment. It came as no surprise to many veteran cybersecurity experts. AI researcher and author Gary Marcus, in 2022, predicted such a possibility on his blog, describing it as an “AI’s Jurassic Park Moment.”

Last week, AWS Chief Security Officer Stephen Schmidt told reporters: “Containers are not security boundaries. I actually have a T-shirt that says that, which I started wearing about three years ago.”

AWS hosts multiple models for users through its Bedrock platform. Schmidt said the AI Mythos era requires a far more vigilant approach to cybersecurity, especially for researchers.

“One of the reasons that we built the virtualization infrastructure for AWS using our own Nitro Hypervisors so many years ago was we realized that containers were not an appropriate security boundary then. The same is true for AI. You cannot use an AI container as a security boundary.”

In March, a group of British researchers calculated the sandbox breakout period for various large language models, which proved very accurate months later.

A follow-on paper published this week by the same group describes how to build better containment environments for the models emerging today.

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The state of play around the 2027 pay raise, or lack thereof

Erich Wagner — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 16:55:28 -0400

President Trump is expected sometime this month to issue a plan to freeze federal employee pay in 2027, though if last year was any indication, it may not be that straightforward.

When the White House published its fiscal 2027 budget proposal in April, the document, which normally lays out the administration’s pay plan for the following year, was silent on civilian compensation. The Office of Management and Budget later confirmed that Trump was in fact proposing “no pay increase” for 2027, while military service members would see between a 5% and 7% raise, depending upon their rank.

Trump now has until the end of August to formalize his alternative pay plan for next year; otherwise, much larger automatic increases in locality pay would take effect, due to a formula in the 1990 Federal Pay Comparability Act that has been criticized by presidents of both parties since its enactment.

Congress thus far has not taken action to overrule Trump’s pay plan. The House’s fiscal 2027 financial services and general government appropriations bill is silent on federal employee pay—effectively endorsing the president’s plan. And while the Senate has not yet published its draft of the FSGG funding bill, lawmakers in that chamber have proposed reducing the military pay raise to an across-the-board 3.6% raise as part of its proposed 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.

Democrats in both the House and Senate have called for a more fulsome raise of 4.1% on average next year, as part of their annual advocacy for the Fair Adjustment of Income Rates Act. Under that plan, civilian federal employees would receive a 3.1% increase in basic pay, coupled with an average 1% increase in locality pay.

While Trump is expected to formalize his plan for a pay freeze later this month, it’s not a sure thing. Last year, the president’s so-called “skinny” budget was also silent on federal employees pay, while OMB documents to agencies instructed them to plan for a pay freeze in 2026.

But ultimately, the president’s alternative pay plan enacted a 1% across-the-board increase in basic pay and no increase in locality pay for most workers. Feds in “law enforcement” fields were granted a 3.8% raise, in line with the increase afforded to military service members in 2026.

More changes to federal compensation could be in the offing in the coming months, as the Office of Personnel Management has signaled it plans to issue new regulations governing the locality pay system.

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DOGE took credit for savings that never happened, watchdog finds

Christian Robles — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 16:50:52 -0400

The Trump administration should prominently display data quality issues and limitations on the Department of Government Efficiency’s website listing estimated savings, the Government Accountability Office recommended in a new report, finding the public tally heralding billions of dollars in estimated savings was rife with errors.

The watchdog found that the website’s estimated savings tracker — or “Wall of Receipts” — listed contracts that were not actually cancelled, took credit for leases that were in the process of termination before DOGE’s existence and did not adequately explain how savings were calculated. The findings cast doubt on DOGE’s claim that it saved taxpayers $215 billion by slashing contracts, grants, leases and other wasteful expenditures.

The report, requested by Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., analyzed the wall of receipts’ estimated savings of roughly $110.34 billion from supposedly terminated contracts, grants and leases.

GAO found that roughly $34.6 billion of the estimated $61 billion saved from cancelled contracts came from either contracts that were never actually terminated or could not be corroborated as terminated.

DOGE specifically reported it cancelled 13,476 contracts but “almost 2,000 contracts were not terminated,” according to GAO’s analysis of the Federal Procurement Data System. In one case, DOGE continued to estimate saving taxpayers more than $1.7 billion by cancelling a Defense Health Agency IT support contract after Defense Department officials got DOGE officials to agree the contract should not be terminated, GAO wrote. No action was ultimately taken on the contract.

Additionally, about 27.8% of contracts listed as terminated — including all contracts at the DOGE-dismantled United States Agency for International Development — did not include identifying information, GAO found. Because of this lack of information, the office could not find 1,856 supposedly terminated contracts on the Federal Procurement Data System even after taking additional steps to do so.

The watchdog added that DOGE did not consistently use its stated methodology for calculating estimated savings from terminated contracts. And even in cases where DOGE did use its stated methodology, it did not “account for many complexities and nuances of federal contracting or sufficiently identify limitations.” DOGE — whose operation formally ended as of July 4 — did not return GAO’s requests for interviews or clarifications.

DOGE did not provide sufficient information to verify about 96.2% — or $47.32 billion — of estimated grant savings, GAO found. But even for the small portion of grant savings GAO could replicate, “the amount of reported savings may not be realized,” according to the report.

DOGE reported that it terminated 264 leases, saving taxpayers about $113 million. But the General Services Administration told GAO that 108 out of those 264 leases were identified for termination before DOGE was established. Because of that discrepancy and other inaccuracies, GAO estimated DOGE overstated how much it saved on terminated leases by $81.1 million.

DOGE also further overstated lease savings by not considering other factors, such as relocation costs and potential early termination fees, according to the report.

The White House did not return a request for comment by the time of publication.

“This GAO report underscores the need for increased transparency and accountability from the Trump Administration so the American public can better understand DOGE’s activities as the organization guts vital government programs,” Blumenthal said in a press release.

The GAO released a separate report Wednesday where it said it could not verify if DOGE employees completed required ethics training designed to avoid conflicts of interest.

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Calls for IG probe of Reflecting Pool renovation come amid questions over watchdog's independence

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 16:40:10 -0400

Two Democratic senators on Tuesday asked for an investigation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation by the Interior Department inspector general, an independent oversight office whose former leader and a lawmaker say is the new workplace of a Trump political appointee.

Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., the ranking members of the Environment and Public Works and Energy and Natural Resources committees respectively, submitted their request after the U.S. Attorney's Office for D.C. dropped charges against several individuals accused of vandalizing the landmark. Instead, federal prosecutors now say that the damage to the pool’s new lining was likely caused by faulty contractor work.

Bare patches are visible where newly applied blue paint has peeled from the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on June 20, 2026.

KEN CEDENO /GETTY IMAGES

“We urge your office to open an immediate investigation into DOI’s knowledge of coating and peeling issues with the Reflecting Pool — including what was known, who knew it and when they knew it — and whether DOI employees intentionally withheld evidence from USAO-DC,” the senators wrote.

Caryl Brzymialkiewicz, the deputy IG at Interior, is currently leading the office after IG Mark Lee Greenblatt was removed in a mass firing of the watchdogs at the start of Trump’s second term.

On Tuesday, Greenblatt alleged that Dennis Kirk, a co-author of the conservative Project 2025 presidential transition initiative, was installed at the Interior IG.

“This is not about one individual, or whether Mr. Kirk is capable or well-intentioned,” Greenblatt said in a statement. “It is about whether placing a political operative inside an independent watchdog office creates a structural conflict that undermines public confidence in the office's independence.”

Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, also criticized Kirk’s apparent appointment in a statement on Wednesday.

“This man helped write the Project 2025 playbook for seizing control of the federal workforce. Now he sits inside the office charged with rooting out corruption at Interior — the department that manages our national parks, public lands, Tribal programs, and now under Trump, gold-slathered statues and a botched Reflecting Pool renovation,” he said. “That same office is weighing serious ethics investigations into senior officials in this administration. It’s no surprise the White House suddenly wants its own man inside the one place that Trump's cronies still have reason to fear.”

In response to questions about the Reflecting Pool investigation request and Kirk’s alleged appointment, a spokesperson for the Interior IG said the office has no comment.

The Washington Post reported that in 2025 former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard assigned Kirk, then one of her advisers, to a position at the IG for the intelligence community.

In June, the Partnership for Public Service reported that the Trump administration placed political appointees in the IG offices at the Housing and Urban Development and Labor departments. The nonprofit said that it’s rare for such government officials to work for the watchdogs because “it introduces a structural conflict of interest into an institution whose effectiveness depends on independence.”

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Former feds have a new way to find their personnel files

Tammy Flanagan — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 15:00:00 -0400

One of my colleagues, retirement benefits expert Michele Bollier, who answers emails from members of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, was helping a retiree and discovered more good news coming from the Office of Personnel Management.

The agency has taken an important step toward modernizing access to federal personnel records with a new resource called the eOPF Resource Center and the recent launch of the eOPF Documents Request Service.

The electronic Official Personnel Folder, or eOPF, began 20 years ago when the National Finance Center payroll provider started sending SF-50s, Personnel Action Statements, and transactions to the eOPF system for processing. Scanned documents from paper Official Personnel Folders began being added to eOPF in 2007. Two decades have passed since the Commerce Department implemented an e-government initiative that provided easier and faster access for current employees to their personnel files.

Now, if you are a former federal employee or retiree looking for personnel records from your eOPF, there is a new and faster way to request them.

For current and former federal employees, the “electronic Official Personnel Folder,” or eOPF, is more than an administrative archive. It is the official record of federal employment, containing documents such as SF-50s, appointment and separation actions, position changes, benefits-related forms and other records that may be needed years after someone leaves government service.

For many former employees, getting these records has historically been frustrating. Once an employee separated, online access to the agency eOPF system generally ended, leaving the former employee to contact a previous agency human resources office or submit a written request to the National Personnel Records Center.

OPM’s new resources are designed to make that process clearer and, for many people, faster.

The most significant new resource is the Documents Request Service, a secure, public-facing portal. The service allows eligible separated federal employees to request and receive a copy of their eOPF employment folder electronically.

OPM describes the tool as a self-service option that eliminates the need for former employees to rely on government networks, agency-issued credentials or manual paper-based fulfillment methods when their records are already maintained in eOPF.

Being a former federal employee, I decided to try out this new service. I had my doubts since I left federal service in 1988 and doubted that anyone had scanned my old personnel records into the eOPF system. I was right: There were no records.

However, I was reminded that to sign into the Login.gov system, you will need to scan your driver’s license or passport into the system and then provide your Social Security number as further identification that it is you who is trying to log in.

If you are informed that the system could not find your records, you should check the information you entered and try again. Common mistakes are an incorrect Social Security number or ZIP code. You can try it four more times. Then you must wait six hours before trying again.

The service is intended primarily for separated federal employees whose records are in eOPF. It may also be used by current federal employees who do not have government-furnished equipment, a PIV card, a government email address or secure access to their agency’s eOPF system.

It is not intended for current employees who already have normal access through their agency, third-party requesters, the public or individuals whose records were never maintained in the eOPF system.

Former employees who want to use the Documents Request Service should generally wait at least 30 days after their separation date before submitting a request. OPM advises this waiting period because final separation documents, including the SF-50 documenting separation, may not be profiled into the eOPF immediately. Requesting too early could result in an incomplete folder.

OPM’s user guidance says the file should be downloaded and saved promptly because the link expires after 24 hours. The password format described in OPM’s guide uses the employee’s date of birth and the last four digits of the Social Security number.

Because the file contains sensitive personnel information, former employees should save it in a secure location and avoid forwarding it through unsecured email.

In case your records can’t be retrieved through this new system, OPM points users to more traditional options: Contact the former employing agency or request records from the National Personnel Records Center. NPRC maintains official personnel folders for many former federal civilian employees whose service ended after 1951. These records remain subject to the Privacy Act, so access is restricted.

The person of record may request copies of most civilian personnel records, including SF-50s, by submitting a written, signed and dated request. The request should include identifying information such as full name, date of birth, Social Security number, last employing agency, duty station, approximate dates of employment and a clear description of the records needed.

Timing is important here as well. NPRC guidance notes that OPFs are generally retired to the center after separation. If not enough time has passed, the former employee may need to contact the last employing agency instead.

OPM’s post-separation FAQ also explains that eOPF records are often transferred from the former agency to NPRC within 30 to 60 days after the separation action is processed, though an agency may retain the eOPF longer. If the agency still has the folder, it may be required to provide physical copies upon request.

For older personnel records, former employees should understand the difference between non-archival and archival OPFs.

NPRC’s Federal Records Center Program maintains OPFs for former federal civilian employees whose employment ended after 1951. These files generally remain in OPM’s legal custody and are protected by the Privacy Act, which means the person of record, or an authorized third party with signed consent, is usually the proper requester.

Civilian employment records are normally transferred to NPRC within 120 days after separation. If fewer than 120 days have passed, the employee should write to the last employing agency instead.

A written NPRC request should be signed and dated and should clearly identify the records needed, such as the most recent SF-50 or the complete official personnel folder. To help NPRC locate the file, the request should include the full name used during federal employment, date of birth, Social Security number if applicable, employing agency name and location, duty station and approximate beginning and ending dates of service.

Records for federal civilian employees whose service ended before 1952 follow a different archival access process through the National Archives. Those older OPFs may be handled as archival holdings rather than current federal records, so requesters should use National Archives guidance for archival civilian personnel folders.

In practical terms, a former employee seeking older records should first determine the approximate separation date: After 1951 generally points to NPRC’s non-archival OPF process, while before 1952 points to the archival OPF process.

Access to personnel records is not just a matter of convenience. Former employees may need their SF-50s and related documents to verify prior federal service, apply for another federal position, resolve pay or leave questions, support a retirement or benefits claim, confirm military service credit or assist with a security clearance review.

Having an easier electronic path to these documents can reduce delays at moments when former employees may be facing deadlines or life transitions.

The new eOPF resources also reinforce a best practice: Employees should review and download important records before leaving federal service whenever possible. It is much easier to identify missing or incorrect documents while still employed and while agency HR staff can correct problems directly.

Before separation, employees should check key documents such as SF-50s, service computation dates, beneficiary forms, military deposit records, retirement coverage and benefits elections. Any discrepancies should be raised with HR before access ends.

OPM’s updated eOPF Resource Center and Documents Request Service give former federal employees a clearer roadmap for obtaining personnel records after leaving government. The best approach is to start with the new portal if eligible, wait long enough for final separation documents to be added, download the completed folder promptly and keep the records secure. If the portal cannot locate the folder, the next step is to contact the former agency or submit a written request to NPRC. Together, these resources should make it easier for former employees to prove their service, protect their benefits and manage federal employment records long after their last day on the job.

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What history tells us about the potential government shutdown

Frank Konkel — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 13:22:29 -0400

The Senate is working to pass a bipartisan funding bill before a summer recess that would fund the federal government through Dec. 11, prevent a potential government shutdown during November’s midterm elections and avoid a repeat of last year, when agencies began the fiscal year with a record 43-day shutdown.

Senators easily cleared the first in a series of procedural motions Monday by a vote of 89-4, fast-tracking the bill for final vote before the Senate recesses for five weeks. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., all but promised Wednesday that senators would delay the recess—scheduled for Friday—until they navigate a “train wreck” of legislation that includes the spending bill.

The bill has several key differences from the one the House passed on July 21—which Senate Democrats declared dead on arrival—including no new funding for immigration agencies and language temporarily blocking the Trump administration from putting political appointees in charge of federal grant approvals. Unlike the House bill, the Senate bill does not include $1 billion for the Trump-class battleship program, and it would provide government funding one week longer than the House bill, which would fund agencies through Dec. 4.

To be signed into law and avoid a shutdown, one chamber would have to adopt the other’s bill, or appropriators will need to develop a compromise bill that both chambers pass and President Trump signs.

On its face, Congress’ unusual early efforts to avoid a shutdown dramatically decreased the odds of a shutdown—at least in October. On prediction market Kalshi, odds of an Oct. 1 shutdown now sit at 25%, down from 64% last month.

“It’s good they’re getting ahead of it. I cannot recall a time when a CR was introduced in July,” said David Berteau, a longtime budget expert and former high-ranking Pentagon appointee in both the Reagan and Obama administrations. “I don’t really know what the parties want, but the members want to not have a shutdown.”

That should alleviate some angst for federal employees and government contractors who’ve dealt with three partial or full government shutdowns in the past year. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees missed several consecutive pay periods, forcing many to take odd jobs or seek loans to pay bills. Many contractors, meanwhile, weren’t paid at all during the shutdown, since they are not legally entitled to backpay. Millions of Americans suffered too, with fewer domestic flights and hours-long security lines at airports, disruptions to public services and tens of billions of dollars in lost economic output.

In decades past, chances of a shutdown with a government and presidency under the same party—during a critical midterm election—would have been exceedingly low. Lately, though, there are no sure bets.

What history says

Given recent history, Berteau said it’s anything but a done deal.

Until 2018, every government shutdown for the previous four decades occurred under a divided government, when either the majority in the House or Senate was held by a different political party than the presidency.

“Until 2018, the last time we had a shutdown with unified government was under Jimmy Carter in 1980,” Berteau said. “That trend broke briefly in 2018, which started under unified gov’t and ended under a divided government. Then we had no shutdowns until last year, and all three of those were under a unified government.”

“Normally, I would say don’t worry about it, but it’s not normal anymore,” Berteau added.Neither House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., nor the White House has weighed in yet on the Senate’s spending bill. Once Congress returns from summer recess, they’ll be under a time crunch, with only 16 working days in the legislative calendar to advance a stopgap before the fiscal year ends Sept. 30. Other competing priorities, including a reconciliation bill and the SAVE Act, may take some oxygen during those proceedings.

“The possibility of an October shutdown, even in an election year, even in a unified government, that possibility is not zero,” Berteau said.

Even with apparent momentum in the Senate, government executives would be wise to dust off their shutdown plans, while government contractors who serve the government should prepare their pipelines and communication strategy for a possible shutdown. That’s because even if an October shutdown is avoided through a stopgap measure, the federal government faces the prospect of running out of money during a lame-duck Congress—midnight on Dec. 12 in the Senate’s current bill—wherein at least one of the House or Senate is favored to flip into Democratic control.

The scenario is eerily similar to the 2018 shutdown, which until last year held the record for the longest shutdown at 35 days. The 2018 shutdown began Dec. 22 when government funding ran out in President Trump’s first term, with Republicans in charge of the House and Senate. The crux of that shutdown was Senate Democrats’ opposition to more than $5 billion in funding for Trump’s border wall. That shutdown finally ended Jan. 25, 2019, three weeks after Democrats took control of the House under new Speaker Nancy Pelosi, following their successful flip of the chamber in November.

With three months to go until elections, most polls give Democrats better than an 80% chance to take the House in November, with Democrats only slight underdogs to take the Senate. There is a very real possibility that Republicans lose control of either the House or Senate in November, leaving a lame-duck Congress the responsibility of passing another budget bill to avoid a holiday shutdown.

“History says that when one House or both change hands in the midterms, they wait until a new Congress is seated before any final spending deals,” Berteau said.

That doesn’t mean a deal couldn’t happen. Both parties may have incentives to negotiate.

John Weiler, cofounder and executive director the IT Acquisition Advisory Council, said, “If Republicans lose the House as is expected, they will be moving to pass appropriations bills and a budget reconciliation package before the new Congress is sworn in, so they’ll be looking to make a deal with the Democrats on appropriations.”

Similarly, Weiler said, “Democrats should also be looking to strike a deal on appropriations because the Trump administration is happy to operate under a continuing resolution since it gives them more leverage and might be the last chance they have to set new spending levels versus ongoing CRs and budget showdowns.”

Until the president’s signature is dry on a spending bill, all bets are off.

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Mediation agency changes how labor disputes move forward

Erich Wagner — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:45:56 -0400

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service this week promulgated new regulations to formalize a controversial April policy change that allows some agencies to effectively halt pending grievances that unions have filed against them.

FMCS’ primary role is to assign mediators to try to resolve disputes that arise during collective bargaining negotiations in both the private and public sectors, and to provide arbitrators to adjudicate alleged violations of union contracts at federal agencies as part of the grievance process.

But earlier this year, labor attorneys reported that the agency had abandoned its purely ministerial posture and begun asking “threshold” questions regarding the arbitrability of grievance prior to issuing an arbitrator or panel of arbitrators for the parties to choose from. By the end of April, FMCS settled on and released a new policy via memo: it would no longer appoint arbitrators for grievances at agencies implicated in President Trump’s two 2025 executive orders banning collective bargaining on national security grounds.

That policy conflicted with the agency’s own regulations, which state that arbitrator panel requests, “whether joint or unilateral, will be honored.” Federal sector labor law also stipulates that union contracts must allow for “either” party to invoke arbitration.

In May, the American Federation of Government Employees, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, National Federation of Federal Employees and National Treasury Employees Union accusing FMCS of violating the Administrative Procedure Act by not following its own regulations.

But in an interim final rule published in the Federal Register Wednesday, FMCS formally changed its regulations to allow it to make “limited threshold determinations” regarding its authority to issue arbitrator panels. The rule, which FMCS said is necessary because some agencies have objected to its issuance of arbitrators due to the anti-union EOs, is effective immediately, though the agency is accepting comments on the change until Sept. 4.

“FMCS has determined that the current sentence stating that every joint or unilateral panel request ‘will be honored’ could be misread as requiring FMCS to provide panels even where doing so would be inconsistent with law, a court order or FMCS’ statutory or regulatory authority,” the agency wrote. “That was not the intended effect of the regulation. The proposed rule clarifies that FMCS retains authority to make limited threshold determinations concerning whether FMCS may lawfully provide the requested service.”

During the threshold question investigation process, FCMS said it may request information from the parties and decide to decline the panel request, hold it in abeyance or “take another administratively appropriate action.”

“FMCS’ action on such a threshold question does not adjudicate the parties’ underlying contractual, statutory or arbitrability dispute," the rule states. “These changes reflect the longstanding principle that arbitration is voluntary and correct confusing and potentially misleading language in FMCS’ current regulation.”

But Suzanne Summerlin, an independent attorney that represents unions in grievances and other matters, said FMCS is effectively usurping authority from both arbitrators, who are empowered to decide questions of arbitrability on their own, and the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which hears appeals of arbitration decisions.

“FMCS is a ministerial agency—they’re not supposed to be determining whether there’s a duty to arbitrate by an agency or a union,” she said. “[It’s] not a matter of consent as to whether there is a binding arbitration provision in your contract, it’s a matter of statute . . . The statute requires arbitration to happen and it is not by operation of consent of the parties.”

Robert Tobias, distinguished practitioner in residence at American University’s Key Executive Leadership Program and a former president of NTEU, said he struggled to understand the reasoning behind FMCS’ policy change in its regulations.

“I don’t see a rationale, I just don’t see one that make sense at all,” he said. “On the one hand, it’s argued that unions need to file administratively before they can go to court, but then they say, ‘We’re not going to let you exhaust your administrative remedies.’ There can be no rationale when you have the juxtaposition of those two points of view . . . I think it’s pretty hard to construct something when the language in the law is so clear.”

FMCS’ move comes amid a tide of recent arbitrators’ decisions in favor of unions on issues like the 2025 cancellation of telework and firing of probationary employees, some of which occurred with agency management in absentia.

“Unions—and my clients—have been winning those cases left and right,” Summerlin said. “I’ve had three cases go before arbitrators against the EPA with the agency in absentia. EPA, VA, all of those agencies are just not participating at all.”

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Watchdog puts new numbers on the size of DOGE, but many details remain unknown as agencies refuse to turn over information

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:52:42 -0400

The Government Accountability Office on Wednesday published a report that uncovered more information about the individuals who worked for the Department of Government Efficiency. Still, the congressional watchdog’s findings were limited, including with respect to whether the DOGE employees completed required ethics training and paperwork, due to a lack of cooperation from agencies.

Investigators determined that there were at least 206 employees who worked for the Trump administration’s cost-cutting entity that held positions in the Executive Office of the President, even if they were detailed to other agencies, between Jan. 20, 2025, and Jan. 31, 2026. That number excludes DOGE staffers who were not assigned to the EOP.

GAO found that at least 128 of these individuals separated from their EOP positions by Jan. 31, 2026.

Of those 206 staffers, at least 27 were special government employees, meaning they could not serve for more than 130 days during any one-year period. For example, Elon Musk, the former de facto head of DOGE, was an SGE, which raised conflict of interest questions due to his companies receiving billions in federal contracts.

However investigators were not able to determine the appointment type, such as Schedule C political appointee or noncareer Senior Executive Service, for more than 150 of the personnel because many agencies did not provide the requested information.

“This total includes the 127 [U.S. DOGE Service] employees who held titles as digital services experts or consultants within USDS,” according to the report. “Although USDS has stated that USDS positions last no more than 4 years, we were unable to determine whether these USDS employees or other personnel had held such time-limited appointments.”

In total, 10 agencies and the EOP did not respond to requests from GAO for records that these DOGE employees participated in ethics training and completed financial disclosure reports.

“As a result, we are not able to determine the total number of DOGE personnel who held positions within EOP who received trainings or who completed financial disclosures at those 10 agencies or at EOP,” investigators wrote.

Nine agencies, covering 64 DOGE employees, did submit information about whether the staffers did such training and reports. But GAO argued that much of the documentation was incomplete. For example, the Agriculture Department provided an “ethics-related presentation” for Trump appointees but didn’t offer evidence for when, or if, the DOGE staffers received the training.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

While “the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization” terminated on July 4, pursuant to the executive order establishing it, GAO pointed out that the directive permanently renamed an existing White House office as the U.S. DOGE Service.

“Since the EO does not call for the termination of the broader USDS entity, it is possible that USDS and personnel at federal agencies could continue to do work that advances some of these initiatives after the temporary organization’s termination,” investigators wrote.

DOGE spearheaded many of the civil service reductions that took place last year, resulting in a decrease of more than 350,000 to the federal employee headcount.

GAO in April reported that the Treasury Department and DOGE did not follow all security protocols with respect to granting access to government payment systems.

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CDC gets a new chief as agency faces questions over its direction

Shauneen Miranda, States Newsroom — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:36:28 -0400

Dr. Erica Schwartz will be the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after the Senate confirmed her nomination Wednesday.

The Senate confirmed, 51-44, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the national public health agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, which has taken heat over the vaccine-skeptical agenda pursued by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

That agenda marked a central theme of Schwartz’s tense confirmation hearing in July before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, where lawmakers on both sides of the aisle pressed her on how she would deal with any political interference from the Trump administration when it comes to vaccine policy.

Schwartz ultimately scored the backing of the panel’s chair, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who had appeared dissatisfied with her responses at her confirmation hearing.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., was the only Democrat who voted to confirm Schwartz’s bid.

Schwartz worked as an occupational medicine physician in the U.S. Navy. She transferred to the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, where she achieved the rank of rear admiral.

Schwartz also served as the chief medical officer of the U.S Coast Guard and later as deputy surgeon general of the United States.

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