Government Executive - Management

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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EPA’s restructuring could change who shapes chemical risk decisions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What IRIS did – and what it didn’t do

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why critics wanted IRIS dismantled

That track record matters.

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

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

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

What changes when the referee disappears?

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

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

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

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

How communities are affected

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Layoffs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Why federal agencies still need to defend hiring standards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three concrete steps follow for federal HR leaders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FEMA did not respond to a request for comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Record first reported the appointments.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Secret Service funding fight sharpens over White House modernization push

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Urgent request

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Funding breakdown

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

A breakdown obtained by States Newsroom showed:

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

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

Thune predicts passage next week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A familiar name returns to lead ICE amid renewed political pressure

Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom — Wed, 13 May 2026 16:35:12 -0400

Long-time federal immigration official David Venturella will lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency spearheading President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, according to a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson.

Venturella will replace outgoing ICE acting director Todd Lyons, who last month announced he would leave his position by May 31, the DHS official told States Newsroom on Wednesday. Venturella will also take on the role on an acting basis. ICE has been without a permanent, Senate-confirmed director since Trump first took office in 2017.

Venturella will oversee an agency that has come under intense congressional and public scrutiny after federal immigration agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.

The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti led to a months-long shutdown of DHS after Democrats pushed for constraints on federal immigration officers. The shutdown ended last month and Republicans are moving forward with funding ICE and Customs and Border Protection for the next three years through a complex legislative process that does not require Democratic votes.

Venturella worked at DHS during the Obama administration, when he led the Secure Communities program in which local law enforcement shared fingerprints and booking information with federal immigration officials to identify immigrants in the country without legal authorization. The Obama administration eventually ended the program, but Trump revived it in 2017.

Venturella has also worked for the private prison company GEO, which earns billions in government contracts to detain immigrants across the country. He retired from GEO in 2023 after serving as the vice president of client relations.

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$1 billion Secret Service funding boost plan draws scrutiny over limited details

Jennifer Shutt and Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom — Wed, 13 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Several Republican U.S. senators left a closed-door lunch with Secret Service Director Sean Curran on Tuesday saying they still have questions about how the agency would spend an additional $1 billion.

“I’ve asked for a lot more data,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine. “If there are needs for new training ranges, for example, that should have been in the president’s budget.”

Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, tucked the significant increase into a larger immigration enforcement bill, leading to concerns from some of his GOP colleagues and criticism from Democrats the money will go toward construction of a White House ballroom.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said after the lunch meeting the additional funding is predominantly for regular Secret Service activities, not to support the creation of a new ballroom.

“The ballroom is being financed privately but the security associated with it represents about 20% of what this request was,” Thune said.

A breakdown of how the new funding would be used by Secret Service, obtained by States Newsroom, showed:

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

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said he wants the Secret Service to share more information.

“I think the bottom line is, people want to be supportive, right? They want security for the president, but they want more detail,” he said.

The $1 billion for the Secret Service would be in addition to the $1.17 billion Republicans approved for the agency in their “big, beautiful” law as well as the agency’s annual funding level.

The White House released its budget request in early April, asking lawmakers to approve $3.5 billion for the Secret Service in an annual funding bill, a $36 million increase.

Senators want more specifics

Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, said he wants “more specifics” from the administration in addition to what lawmakers saw during the lunch.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he’s asked for more information from the Secret Service about its needs.

“They're trying to make it very clear that what they're talking about are the security improvements that should be included if we're making major reconstruction within the White House itself,” he said. “So I think as more of the information begins to come out, I think people are going to feel a lot more comfortable with what they're requesting.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he supported the additional Secret Service funding, arguing that security at the White House can be complex.

“I’m fine with that,” he said. “So long as it’s used for security purposes.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she wanted to see a detailed breakdown of where the $1 billion would go before committing to supporting the move.

No details from Judiciary chair

Grassley, who included the line item for “security adjustments and upgrades” for the East Wing Modernization Project in his panel’s immigration enforcement bill, didn’t share details before the lunch about how he landed on the $1 billion figure.

“It was just kind of a consensus among all of us,” he said, later adding the agreement was among Senate GOP lawmakers, not with the White House.

Grassley said he didn’t expect to know before the end of the week whether the Secret Service funding would stay in the $72 billion package that is intended to fund immigration activities for the next three years.

The Judiciary Committee bill and one written by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which will be combined in the coming days, would provide Immigration and Customs Enforcement with $38.175 billion, Customs and Border Protection with $26.02 billion, the secretary of Homeland Security’s office with $5 billion and the Department of Justice with $1.457 billion.

GOP leaders in Congress hope to approve the bill next week, sending it to President Donald Trump before the Memorial Day weekend break.

Opportunity for Dems

Senate floor debate on the package includes a marathon amendment voting session that will give Democrats, or even Republicans, the chance to hold up-or-down votes on the additional spending.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, said Democrats “will certainly be able to put our colleagues on record” about the additional Secret Service funding.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats will “fight this bill tooth and nail.”

“We’ll offer amendments and we’ll force Republicans to vote again and again on one simple question — are you with working families or are you with Trump’s ballroom,” he said.

Thune said earlier in the day that Republicans “can’t have a lot of hiccups right now” and still send Trump the package before the president’s June 1 deadline.

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DOT inspector general reviewing complaint against Sean Duffy over reality show

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Trump taps former FEMA official ousted after defending agency

Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom — Tue, 12 May 2026 11:01:36 -0400

President Donald Trump on Monday nominated Cameron Hamilton to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a former acting chief who was fired in 2025 shortly after he told a congressional panel FEMA should continue to exist.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will likely schedule a hearing in the coming weeks for Hamilton to testify about his goals for the agency as part of the confirmation process.

The panel will then schedule a vote on whether to send his nomination to the floor, where Hamilton will need to secure approval from a majority of senators before he would become FEMA administrator.

Taking on that role will be no easy task, especially since Trump has spoken repeatedly during his second administration about reducing the size and scope of the agency.

“We want to wean off of FEMA and we want to bring it down to the state level,” Trump said in June. “We're moving it back to the states so the governors can handle it. That's why they're governors. Now, if they can't handle it, they shouldn't be governor.”

The FEMA review council that Trump created to review the agency submitted its report last week recommending states shoulder more of the cost and responsibility of disaster relief.

Not ‘in the best interest’ to kill FEMA

The previous disconnect between Trump and Hamilton about whether FEMA should continue led to Hamilton being removed from his role leading the agency last year.

Hamilton testified before a House panel in May 2025 that he personally did “not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

“Having said that, I'm not in a position to make decisions and impact outcomes on whether or not a determination, such as consequential as that, should be made,” he said at the time. “That is a conversation that should be had between the president of the United States and this governing body on identifying the exact ways and methodologies in which what is prudent for federal investment, and what is not.”

One day later, he was ousted as the senior official performing the duties of the administrator at FEMA.

David Richardson has been the senior official performing the duties of FEMA administrator ever since. He was previously the assistant secretary of the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office at the Department of Homeland Security.

Podcast tell-all

Hamilton detailed his time leading FEMA on an episode of the “Disaster Tough” podcast that aired in September, saying he had developed a plan to address that the agency had “become too bureaucratic.”

“I was very clear and poignant that the cause of most of the problems in FEMA is because we keep putting too much crap in FEMA’s rucksack that never should have been there,” he said.

Hamilton then spoke about the Shelter and Services Program, which provides grant funding to organizations that help house, feed and assist migrants released by the Department of Homeland Security.

He argued that is not an “emergency management requirement” and that “FEMA has become a functional multi-tool.”

Housing was a “prime example” of where another federal department, like the Department of Housing and Urban Development, could take over some of the tasks that FEMA currently handles, he said.

“I said, we need to aggressively talk to HUD about them having a larger stakehold in that particular missions field because they are more uniquely suited,” he said.

But Hamilton insisted he was not supportive of plans to completely eliminate the agency.

“I was not hired to abolish FEMA. That was never a part of the conversation and that’s never something that I would have agreed with,” he said on the podcast. “And I was very clear, I wanted some reform. I wanted to cut wasteful spending. I wanted to downsize the agency. There's no denying that. And I think most of those things could be done wisely and properly.”

Any offloading of responsibilities from the federal government to states, he said, would include “a gradual phasing out.”

“We needed to give the states some time to see what that entails and to respond accordingly,” he said. “Not just, ‘Hey, the water is now shut off. You're on your own.’ That's not wise. That's not being a good partner.”

‘I wanted to choke some people’

Hamilton also discussed what happened before and after he testified in front of a House subcommittee a year ago, including that he was polygraphed in March.

“One of the more difficult things for me to deal with was when my character was being attacked, and when I was being accused of being a liar and a leaker, and I was polygraphed for it,” he said. “DHS requested that I be polygraphed. And they said in their statement, you know, my character, judgment, my stability, my ethics were all in question.”

Asked by the podcast host if he wanted to put on his “Navy SEAL hat” when that was happening, Hamilton responded: “I wanted to choke some people, that's for sure.”

Hamilton said he knew that he was about to be fired and that on the day he testified before Congress, officials “notified my security that my access was eliminated. So before the testimony, I knew it was coming, and I knew it was coming weeks in advance.”

Later in the episode, Hamilton said he knew he would be asked during the hearing about Trump’s comments regarding FEMA and spoke with former FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor to work through how best to answer the question.

The two then “came to the agreement” that Hamilton would say “it's not in the best interest of the American people.”

“I cannot get behind this position that abolishing FEMA is the answer,” he said. “There are so many things that we can do before we go that extreme and put the American people at what I believe to be extreme risk unnecessarily.”

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‘This will cost lives’: Researchers slam Trump cuts to addiction programs and staffing

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 11 May 2026 16:03:39 -0400

The Trump administration has prioritized combating addiction in the U.S., but a coalition of scientists and research organizations argue in a new report that the president’s efforts to shrink the size of the civil service and otherwise reorganize agencies are undermining that objective.

“The fact is that we've never seen this kind of dismantling of key components of a scientific field, especially a field that is crucial to the health of all segments of the U.S. population,” said Thomas Babor, a professor emeritus of public health and contributor to the report, during a webinar on May 7.

In particular, the Addiction Science Defense Network criticized staff cuts and grant terminations at the National Institutes of Health, specifically the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Elizabeth Ginexi, a report contributor and former NIH official who left the agency last year due to a separation incentive, also emphasized that new research is being slowed; ASDN’s analysis found that funding for new NIAAA and NIDA grants in fiscal 2025 was at its lowest point since 2000.

“These awards are the studies that will produce knowledge three, five or 10 years from now,” she said during the webinar. “When this pipeline shrinks this sharply, the effects will compound for decades.”

ASDN also found that the number of new NIAAA and NIDA grants that include the word “gender” decreased from more than 60 in 2024 to about 20 in 2025, which is the lowest level in 25 years. The researchers attributed this to the Trump administration targeting studies that include words associated with diversity, equity and inclusion.

“Sex and gender are not political categories in addiction science, they are clinical ones,” Ginexi said. “They shape how people metabolize substances, whether they seek treatment and whether they respond to it. Erasing the word doesn't make the science go away. It just means we stop doing it, and this will cost lives.”

The report also covers a January incident in which the Trump administration canceled $1.9 billion across more than 2,500 grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Officials, however, walked those cuts back shortly thereafter.

Still, Robert Vincent, former associate administrator for Alcohol Prevention and Treatment Policy at SAMHSA, lamented during the webinar that nearly two-thirds of the agency’s workforce has been pushed out under Trump. Other reports have found that more than half of staffers have separated.

ASDN noted that many programs to monitor addiction have been scaled back or outright eliminated — including SAMHSA’s Drug Abuse Warning Network, which collected information nationally on hospital visits related to substance use trends. DAWN’s webpage reports that officials stopped collecting that data “as part of a broader effort to align agency activities with agency and administration priorities.”

Vincent warned that weakening data collection with respect to addiction will make it more difficult for researchers and lawmakers to determine where to prioritize funding in the future.

“Programs are being cut and the data to justify restoring them is being dismantled or has integrity problems,” he said. “All of this is happening simultaneously. You cannot appropriate what you cannot justify. You can't justify what you cannot measure.”

Taken as a whole, Babor said that the Trump administration’s cuts have created a climate of fear in the scientific community. As an example, he pointed out that not every researcher who contributed to ASDN’s report was listed.

“Several other contributors asked to have their names withheld from this list because they feared retribution as current or future grant recipients,” he said at the top of the webinar. “I have been an NIH grant recipient on and off for over 50 years, and I have never encountered a situation until now where scientists had to fear that their contributions to a scientific policy document like this would jeopardize their chances of future funding with the federal government.”

A spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department said that officials "remain committed to directing resources toward urgent challenges that address addiction research."

"The Biden administration prioritized ideological agendas over scientific rigor and meaningful outcomes for the American people. This administration is directing taxpayer dollars toward evidence-based research practices that deliver measurable results, with a focus on continuity of funding, operational stability and strong data to support addiction services and research," they said in a statement to Government Executive. "Both SAMHSA and NIH continue to attract and recruit the best and brightest to deliver meaningful breakthroughs and improve outcomes. Assertions of instability in programs are inaccurate and misrepresent ongoing efforts to ensure responsible stewardship of resources."

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CBP backs off border wall construction plans in Big Bend National Park

Ayden Runnels, The Texas Tribune — Sun, 10 May 2026 13:30:51 -0400

Plans to build portions of the border wall in Big Bend National Park are off after bipartisan backlash over the proposed construction, a top U.S. Customs and Border Patrol official told the Washington Examiner.

CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said the Trump administration was no longer planning to construct the wall within the national park following pushback from residents, the Examiner reported this week.

“Big Bend National Park has some just, like, unbelievably huge granite cliffs. It would be kind of silly to put like a 30-foot border wall on top of a 90-foot granite cliff,” Scott said in an interview with the Examiner. “So what we’re trying to convey is that we are going to have meaningful border security in that entire area.”

Scott's comments only referenced the national park and did not detail whether CBP's withdrawal from wall construction also included the nearby Big Bend Ranch State Park or private property in the region.

CBP officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment about updated plans.

Instead of a wall, federal officials will pave roads along the border in the national park and make use of drones and other digital surveillance equipment, Scott said. News of the cancellation comes after weeks of upheaval in Texas as elected officials from both political parties and residents asserted that construction in the park would be a waste of resources.

In February, Trump administration officials waived over two dozen environmental laws to clear the way for a 150-mile-long border barrier through West Texas, including Big Bend National Park.

Then in early April, an interactive map on the CBP website showed the agency planned to instead install “virtual wall” technology in the region that would alert Border Patrol agents when people cross the border. CBP officials took down the map in late April, and it is not currently available on the agency’s website.

Local residents near Big Bend sued the Trump administration in mid-April, arguing that federal officials waived the regulations illegally in pursuit of the construction project.

Funds acquired through the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” President Donald Trump’s key spending package, direct CBP to construct a multifaceted barrier system, or a “Smart Wall,” across the southern border with Mexico. The proposed barriers would include bollard walls and patrol roads, as well as surveillance technology and floating buoys placed in the Rio Grande.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Legislative proposal would eliminate contracting preferences for minority, women-owned businesses

Nick Wakeman — Thu, 07 May 2026 13:11:06 -0400

A bill introduced in the House and Senate in late April would effectively wipe out many of the contracting preferences for minority and women owned businesses.

The Ending Discrimination in Government Contracting Act was introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wisconsin). It would codify and expand on provisions in President Trump’s March 26 executive order on diversity, equity and inclusion provisions in federal contracts.

The EO requires agencies to insert a clause in contracts that bans DEI and mandates reporting requirements to assure compliance, as well as allowing agencies to cancel contracts for not complying with the no-DEI requirement.

Prime contractors would be required to report subcontractors who violate the contract clause. Primes also would be required to report subcontractors who file a lawsuit challenging the no-DEI requirement.

The executive order also set a July 24 deadline for agencies to modify existing contracts by inserting the no DEI clause.

In their bill, Lee and Grothman also aim to eliminate contracting goals and preference programs for small businesses owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. These include the 8(a) program and small businesses owned by women.

Their bill leaves in place goals for businesses in the HUBZone small business, veteran-owned and service-disabled/veteran-owned categories.

The proposed legislation expands on the executive order by also banning agencies from considering sex, along with race and ethnicity when awarding contracts and grants. It also would bar agencies from telling prime contractors to require their subs to consider race, ethnicity or sex.

Lee and Grothman’s bills also end the requirement that agencies report on the number of contracts that go to women-owned businesses, and socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses.

The bills also seeks to repeal the Minority Business Development Act of 2021, which has steered billions of dollars in contracts to minority-owned businesses since its passage.

Part of the argument from Lee and Grothman is that DEI programs waste taxpayer money and are not fair.

Their proposed bills would be a significant restructuring of the small business contracting world and would impact thousands of businesses.

So far, there are no co-sponsors for Lee's bill (S. 4390) or Grothman’s bill (HR. 8511). Both bills have been referred to their respective committees.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Agencies delay action on Trump mail voting order amid legal fight over authority

Jonathan Shorman, States Newsroom — Tue, 05 May 2026 11:31:43 -0400

Federal agencies say they have yet to take steps to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail, as the Department of Justice fights a Democrat-led lawsuit against it.

The Justice Department late Friday filed documents asking a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit and to not block the executive order on a preliminary basis because the order has not been implemented. The filings marked the Trump administration’s first effort to defend the order in court.

The March 31 order directs the creation of state citizenship lists and restricts how ballots can be sent through the mail, instructions that Democrats and election experts have called unconstitutional and illegal. It comes as Trump has seized on the specter of noncitizen voting, an extremely rare phenomenon, to demand sweeping voting restrictions.

In its Friday filing, the Justice Department sought to persuade Judge Carl J. Nichols in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia that a legal challenge is premature.

“If and when the Executive Branch takes some action to implement the Executive Order,” then a lawsuit can be brought, Stephen Pezzi, a senior trial counsel in the Justice Department’s Civil Division, wrote in a court filing.

Nichols has scheduled a hearing for May 14.

No action taken, officials tell court

The DOJ’s argument relies on statements by key federal officials that the agencies affected by the order — the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Postal Service — are still deliberating over how to carry out Trump’s directive. In declarations filed in court on Friday, officials at all three agencies say final decisions have not been made.

“As the Postal Service is still in the deliberation phase of determining how to implement the Executive Order, we have not yet published a proposed rule, nor have we reached any final decisions about the substance of a proposed rule,” Steven Monteith, the Postal Service’s chief customer and marketing officer, wrote.

The executive order directs the postmaster general, who leads the Postal Service, to propose a rule that would block states from sending ballots through the mail except to voters on lists provided by the state to the Postal Service.

The order also instructs Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age U.S. citizens in each state with the help of the Social Security Administration. Democrats allege the Trump administration is building an unauthorized national voter list, despite the U.S. Constitution giving states the responsibility of running federal elections.

Michael Mayhew, deputy associate director of the Immigration Records and Identity Services Directorate within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, wrote in a declaration that the agency “has not yet begun preparation” of state citizenship lists. USCIS is a subsidiary of Homeland Security.

At the Social Security Administration, Jessica Burns MacBride, head of program policy and data exchange, wrote that the agency has not made any final decisions “about its role” in implementing the executive order.

Focus on Postal Service

The order’s opponents are especially watching the Postal Service’s response, since it is an independent corporation overseen by its Board of Governors — not the White House.

Democrats and experts on postal law say Trump has no authority to order the postmaster general to take any action. The Board of Governors hires and fires the postmaster general, and board members serve seven-year terms, helping insulate them from political pressure.

Last month, 37 Democratic U.S. senators signed a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner and the Board of Governors urging the Postal Service to not implement the executive order. The senators pointed out the president has no authority to regulate federal elections or the Postal Service.

“Like the President, the Postal Service has no authority to regulate the manner of voting in federal elections, nor who is eligible to vote by mail in such elections,” the letter says.

The Postal Service is a named defendant in the lawsuit filed by Democratic groups and leaders in Congress.

The Justice Department, which is representing the Postal Service, sidestepped questions about the president’s authority in Friday’s court filing. It called arguments about Trump’s authority over the Postal Service an “abstract legal question” that cannot be resolved before the agency takes action.

Still, Monteith appeared to nod to concerns within the Postal Service over the order’s legality while avoiding specifics.

“I am aware that deliberations are currently ongoing within the Postal Service regarding the implementation of the Executive Order,” Monteith wrote, adding that the deliberations include “legal considerations” regarding the order.

Unitary executive theory

The executive order faces at least five lawsuits, including a challenge brought by a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general led by California’s Rob Bonta. The Justice Department has not yet filed court documents defending the order in that case.

For their part, Republican attorneys general — led by Catherine Hanaway of Missouri — are defending the executive order. Their position, if adopted by courts, would give Trump sweeping control over the Postal Service.

In a May 1 court filing, the GOP attorneys general argue those challenging the executive order are unlikely to succeed in showing that Trump cannot direct the Postal Service to propose a rule. They say that federal law does not specifically prohibit the president from ordering the postmaster general to put forward rules on mail ballots — and it is unconstitutional if it does.

“The Constitution vests the entirety of the executive power in the President,” the Republican coalition says, articulating a view commonly called the unitary executive theory: the idea that Congress cannot constitutionally create agencies that exist outside of White House control.

The Republican states involved also include Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas.

Democrats and many constitutional law experts reject the unitary executive theory, though it has gained support among Trump-aligned Republicans as the White House seeks greater control over independent agencies.

If the U.S. Supreme Court eventually greenlights Trump’s efforts to control the Postal Service and other independent agencies, it would mark a “tremendous” change in how the federal government operates, James Campbell Jr., an attorney in the Washington, D.C., area who consults on postal law, said in an interview last month.

“What you’re basically talking about is redesigning the U.S. government,” Campbell said.

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Easing USPS handgun shipping rules will exacerbate crime, warns Democrat

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 04 May 2026 17:25:06 -0400

A House Democrat is scrutinizing the U.S. Postal Service’s plan to make it easier to ship handguns through the mail.

The postal agency recently issued a proposed rule that would modify mailing standards to align with a January opinion from the Justice Department, which found that a federal prohibition on using USPS to ship “pistols, revolvers and other firearms capable of being concealed on the person” is unconstitutional.

“The Postal Service defers to [DOJ Office of Legal Counsel’s] judgment as to the lawful scope of this criminal statute and worked in consultation with OLC to develop the proposed revisions to our mailability regulations,” officials wrote in the proposed rule. “The proposed revisions expand the scope of mailable firearms compared to the existing regulations by allowing lawful handguns to be mailed under the same terms and conditions as lawful rifles and shotguns.”

Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., in an April 30 letter to Postmaster General David Steiner argued that these reforms will exacerbate crime.

“[The federal prohibition] has effectively helped reduce illegal handgun trafficking by restricting the conditions under which concealable firearms can be shipped through the Postal Service,” the congressman wrote. “Preventing enforcement of this law would enable criminals to acquire concealable guns more easily, bypassing federal background checks and relevant state firearm laws.”

He requested that USPS, by May 14, address several questions about enforcement of the modified rules including:

What security protocols will be implemented to prevent theft of gun packages.
How the agency will comply with state laws that require handgun transfers to go through a federally licensed dealer.
What measures will be instituted to deter the mailing of handguns to individuals who are legally prohibited from purchasing or possessing them.

Frost is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has jurisdiction over the USPS. Before running for Congress, he was an anti-gun violence activist.

The deadline to submit comments on the proposal is Monday. USPS will then review the feedback before issuing a final rule that may incorporate suggested changes.

A USPS spokesperson told Government Executive that the agency would respond directly to Frost’s office about his questions, that officials will evaluate the comments on the proposed rule and that they “have nothing further to offer at this time.”

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Why the next president must rebuild, not just restore, the administrative state

Tom Shoop — Mon, 04 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently addressed the issue of what happens after the Trump administration’s assault on America’s administrative state is over. The work needed to restore the country’s governing capacity, he argued, involves more than just putting the bureaucratic Humpty Dumpty back together again.

The next president can’t “go around and just find all the little bits and pieces of everything that they smashed and tape it together and say: ‘Here you go. I give you the world as it looked in 2023,’” Buttigieg said.

The Trump team is “destroying a lot of good, important things,” he added. “They’re destroying some useless things, too, because they’re destroying everything. So now we get a chance to put things together on different terms.”

The list of “good, important things” destroyed by Elon Musk’s chainsaw-wielding attack on government is long:

More than 200,000 federal jobs were eliminated. That includes 7,000 employees at the Social Security Administration, another 7,000 at the IRS, 3,500 at the Food and Drug Administration, 1,200 at the National Institutes of Health, and 1,300 at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. No federal departments escaped the slashing, and some agencies saw virtually all of their positions eliminated.
The U.S. Agency for International Development was dismantled, bringing an abrupt halt to food aid and disease prevention efforts all over the world.
Employees at other agencies, such as the National Nuclear Security Administration, were fired without an understanding of exactly what they did, necessitating a panicked rehiring effort.
Contracts and grants were summarily canceled, sometimes after using rudimentary artificial intelligence programs to identify programs affiliated with diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

When DOGE burst onto the scene, chaos ensued. Yet the crusade failed to come close to Musk’s promise to cut up to $2 trillion from the federal budget. DOGE’s claim to have saved taxpayers more than $200 billion is suspect due to accounting errors. And even if that figure is accurate, it represents a small percentage of the federal budget. DOGE was a thoroughly haphazard operation, lacking any significant degree of planning or strategy. It operated according to the whims of Musk—then one of Trump’s strongest allies—and of Trump himself.

In that sense, DOGE was a key part of the president’s shift to what scholar Jonathan Rauch has argued is a form of government new to the United States: patrimonialism. This type of regime is based on personal loyalty to a country’s leader, driven by the leader’s ability to dole out rewards and punishments. This explains why Trump has moved so aggressively to expand his own power via executive orders and to politicize the career civil service, especially at the senior executive level.

The enemy of patrimonialism is bureaucracy, a well-functioning administrative state that is not driven by personal fealty to a ruler. A highly functioning country of the size and influence of the United States needs bureaucracy. It requires rules and regulations, not just norms, to provide guardrails against ill-advised policymaking and public administration—or worse, corruption and illegality. It needs a large cadre of nonpartisan experts to administer complex programs and provide support to policymakers.

It’s easy to take for granted what the federal government, and its attendant bureaucracy, have accomplished. In just the last two decades, federal agencies have:

Facilitated the development of a covid vaccine
Averted financial catastrophe in 2008
Expanded access to health insurance
Improved children’s health
Increased infrastructure investment
Significantly improved highway safety

That’s just a short list of achievements at the federal level. The first step toward ensuring government can take on these kinds of challenges again is restoration. That doesn’t mean trying to piece things together exactly as they were before, but it does involve reopening shuttered agencies like USAID and rehiring the workers necessary for agencies like the IRS to do their jobs.

In their popular and influential book Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson offer a critique of bureaucracy from the left. Government at all levels, they argue, has prized procedure over results. Layer upon layer of regulations have made it too easy for opponents of initiatives to manipulate systems so that action is all but impossible.

It’s not just conservatives who feel this way. None other than Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., said last year, “If the argument is that we have a horrendous bureaucracy—absolutely correct. It is terrible. … That is common sense.”

The solution to that problem is not dramatically fewer bureaucrats and more constraints on their actions. It’s redesigning systems so they don’t overemphasize laudable goals such as fairness and diversity at the expense of efficient operations and real-world results.

For example, it has long been too hard to hire federal employees, and to fire those that aren’t measuring up. That’s a result of risk aversion baked into a system encrusted with restrictions on managers’ ability to manage. The solution is more trust in them to do their jobs and to help elected leaders implement their agendas while following the rule of law.

This kind of recalibration of government is essential. And it can’t be accomplished with a chainsaw.

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IBM security executive emerges as possible contender for federal cyber agency leadership post

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 04 May 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Tom Parker, a security services lead at IBM with some two decades of experience in the cybersecurity industry, has emerged as a potential contender to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency after the most recent nominee withdrew himself from consideration for the role, according to five people familiar with the matter.

Parker does not have prior government experience. As of now, he is the preferred choice for the Trump administration, one of the people said. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has been favoring a CISA director with only private sector experience, another one of the people said.

All sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly communicate details concerning the administration’s thinking. Some of the people cautioned that the process is fluid and that the White House may go in a different direction.

Parker did not respond to a request for comment. A DHS spokesperson said the agency “has no personnel announcements to make at this time."

Nextgov/FCW has also asked the White House comment.

Parker has held a number of roles in industry throughout his career. He founded cyber solutions firm Hubble, which was acquired in 2024. He was also inducted as a technology pioneer at the World Economic Forum, and he has for years been a speaker and panelist at Black Hat, an annual cybersecurity conference held in Las Vegas.

CISA has been without a permanent director since President Donald Trump retook office last year. For the last year, Sean Plankey had been nominated to lead the cyberdefense agency, but withdrew late last month after being caught up in issues concerning Coast Guard cutter contracts with a GOP senator.

Nick Andersen has been leading the agency in an acting capacity since its previous acting leader, Madhu Gottumukkala, left in February following a series of leadership incidents during his tenure.

The agency has lost around a third of its workforce in the last year amid Trump administration efforts to shrink the size of the federal government and address other long-prevailing GOP concerns about the cyber agency’s activities.

Parker has previously opined on the federal cyber reductions.

“I think because an agency changes shape and/or the mission moves to other agencies doesn’t mean that the government doesn’t see the mission as being more or less important anymore. I think it’s important to not assume that that’s the case,” he said in a Dark Reading podcast recording last year.

CISA's parent agency, DHS, has just emerged from a record funding lapse. A major trade association for government contractors warned last week that it will take time for federal operations to return to normal and for some contractors to get financial relief from missed reimbursements due to the shutdown.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include comment from DHS.

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Contracting association warns it could take DHS until the end of the year to ‘get back on track’ following record-breaking shutdown

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:15:37 -0400

While the funding lapse for most Homeland Security Department agencies ended on Thursday, a trade association for government contractors warned that it will take time for federal operations to return to normal and for some contracting companies to experience financial relief from missed reimbursements due to the shutdown.

“We're very thankful that the shutdown is now over, but there's still a lot of work to be done to get the government back on track,” said Jim Carroll, the CEO of the Professional Services Council.

The association reported on Tuesday that as a result of the DHS shutdown, which began in mid-February, contracts that support government cybersecurity operations as well as disaster response and preparedness were forced to operate at a reduced capacity.

Even though DHS appropriations have now resumed, Carroll cautioned that it may take until the end of the year for agencies and contractors to return to normal capabilities.

“For every day of a government shutdown, it takes three to five business days for the federal government to get back on track,” the PSC CEO said. “So with this extraordinary shutdown, the longest in history for any agency, what this means is that it will be many months before the government can get up and running on a normal basis. The aftershocks from a shutdown will last probably through the end of this year.”

He also said that many companies were still recovering — both financially and with respect to fulfilling contract requirements — from the 43-day fall 2025 shutdown.

President Donald Trump in April signed a memorandum to use untapped funds to pay DHS employees who hadn’t been receiving paychecks because of the appropriations lapse. But Carroll noted that the administration’s directive didn’t apply to contractors.

He said that several companies, including Transportation Security Administration contractors that help secure airports, faced enormous financial pressures, as they had to pay their employees but were not receiving payments from DHS for their work.

“These companies were paying their employees to come to work, even though they were not getting reimbursed by the government to do this,” Carroll said. “So what that meant was that companies were depleting cash on hand or they had to rely on lines of credit. That's really an untenable situation, especially for some of the smaller and mid-sized companies.”

He recommended that DHS create a surge team to distribute shutdown-related reimbursements and accrued interest.

“In some situations, we think that the interest alone that the government will owe to the companies will exceed the penalties,” Carroll said. “This shutdown means that the government will not only need to reimburse the companies, the government will also owe interest payments and penalty payments because of a shutdown.”

He also warned that the funding lapse will impact DHS and contractors for the remainder of the fiscal year, as the department has less time to obligate its funding and enter into contracts.

DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

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