Government Executive - Management

DHS funding bill heads to Trump, ending shutdown for department employees

Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:09:48 -0400

The House approved a bill Thursday that will fund almost every agency in the Department of Homeland Security for the next five months, sending the measure to President Donald Trump weeks after the Senate unanimously approved it.

Once the bill becomes law, it will end the shutdown that began in mid-February and has at times stalled paychecks for federal employees throughout much of the department, including those at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Transportation Security Administration.

The voice vote to pass the DHS appropriations bill finally marks an end to the annual government funding process that was supposed to be wrapped up before the end of September. There were three shutdowns in all through the fall and early spring.

Connecticut Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, said during brief floor debate it was “about damn time” Republican leaders brought the bill to the floor.

DeLauro said that “from the outset” Democrats wanted to negotiate with Republicans to address “armed, masked agents marauding our streets and terrorizing people in our communities.”

“It has been the Republicans (who) have been intransigent and not willing to do that,” she said. “But there we go. Today we’re going to do it. It could have been done 76 days ago. I’ll take it today.”

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy said separating out funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol from the DHS funding bill “is offensive to the men and women who serve” in those agencies.

“While we are all unified in funding the rest of DHS, we are absolutely horrified that we are blowing up the appropriations process to target those brave men and women who are doing the Lord’s work to keep us safe from cartels, from dangerous actors and from illegal aliens across the streets of America that have been endangering the American people,” he said.

Republicans plan to use the complex budget reconciliation process to fund ICE and the Border Patrol for the rest of Trump’s term without negotiating any new guardrails on immigration agents.

One shutdown after another

Instead of completing the dozen annual government funding bills before their Oct. 1 deadline, lawmakers' stark differences over funding and policy led to a trio of shutdowns that stalled paychecks for federal employees and wreaked havoc on hundreds of programs.

The first shutdown, which affected much of the federal government, lasted 43 days as Democrats tried unsuccessfully to extend the enhanced tax credits for people who purchase their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

A partial shutdown lasting four days ended in early February when lawmakers approved a stopgap spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security alongside the remaining full-year appropriations bills for other departments.

But lawmakers failed to reach a bipartisan agreement to place constraints on federal immigration agents before the temporary funding bill for DHS expired on Feb. 14, leading to a third shutdown for the department.

Senate Democrats demanded several restrictions on immigration agents after federal officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January. While Republicans control both chambers of Congress, most bills cannot move through the Senate without the support of at least 60 lawmakers.

After nearly six weeks, Senate Republican leaders agreed to remove funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol from the DHS appropriations bill, unanimously sending it to the House for approval in late March.

House hangup

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said at the time a plan to use the complex budget reconciliation process to provide three years of funding for ICE and Border Patrol wasn’t acceptable. He refused to put the Senate-passed bill on the House floor for a vote.

The Senate tried again in early April, sending an identical bill to the House, which Johnson declined to schedule a vote on until Thursday.

The House vote on the DHS appropriations bill happened less than a day after Republicans in that chamber voted to adopt the budget resolution that unlocks the reconciliation process. Republican senators approved the tax and spending blueprint earlier this month.

Congress’ budget resolution isn’t a bill and doesn’t need to go to the president for his signature in order to take effect. It doesn’t actually fund anything but is designed to help lawmakers plan tax and spending policy for the next decade.

GOP lawmakers intend to use the reconciliation process the budget resolution provides to approve a bill in the coming weeks that will provide up to $140 billion for ICE and Border Patrol. That avoids the need to place any new constraints on federal immigration officers in order to get Democrats’ votes to limit Senate debate.

Members of Congress will, however, still need to find agreement on funding for the rest of government ahead of the next fiscal year, which will begin on Oct. 1.

Another impasse will mean another shutdown, just weeks before the November midterm elections.

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House votes to make IRS publish call metrics online

Natalie Alms — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The House on Monday passed a set of bipartisan proposals meant to improve IRS customer service and technology.

The Taxpayer Experience Improvement Act, backed by Reps. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., and Don Beyer, D-Va., requires the tax agency to publish detailed, real-time and monthly metrics online like call volume, wait times and callback availability for major IRS phone lines.

The proposal also instructs the IRS to make more information on refund status available to taxpayers through online IRS accounts, where the agency would be required to allow taxpayers to respond to IRS letters online.

Similar legislation has been introduced in previous sessions of Congress but not made it into law. The Senate has yet to pass the bill, which Sens. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., introduced in February.

The IRS replaced its telephone customer service metric earlier this year. The National Taxpayer Advocate had called that old metric misleading because it measures the percentage of calls answered by a person among those sent to IRS employees, not the proportion of callers who reach a person. In fiscal 2025, the level of service was 60%, but only 26% of callers spoke with an IRS employee, according to the internal watchdog.

The IRS will now track average speed of answer, call abandonment rate and time spent on the phone line, IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank Bisignano told The Washington Post earlier this year.

Before replacing the metric altogether, the agency lowered its level of service standard from 85% of calls answered to 70%. Last year, the IRS pushed thousands of employees out of their jobs, mostly through voluntary incentives. It then struggled to hire employees for tax filing season and eventually moved human resources and tech employees to fill in taxpayer service roles.

Bisignano is also the head of the Social Security Administration, another federal entity with metrics that have been in the news since many of them were removed from the agency's website last year. SSA’s inspector general released a report on the agency’s phone line metrics late last year that showed SSA’s new wait time metric is lower than the amount of time it actually takes for callers to speak with an SSA employee.

Lawmakers in the House also passed the BARCODE Efficiency Act on Monday. Like the Taxpayer Experience Improvement Act, it’s also been introduced in a prior Congress but didn’t become law.

The bill, which has yet to move through the Senate, would require the IRS to use barcodes and scanning technology to digitize paper federal tax returns and convert the data into an electronic format. The tax agency would also be tasked with using optical character recognition technology to transcribe paper returns and paper correspondence received by the IRS.

Reps. Brad Schnieder, D-Ill., and Rudy Yakym, R-Ind., introduced the House version, and Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., and Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., are backing it in the Senate.

The IRS has been trying to rid itself of paper for years, and the National Taxpayer Advocate has long recommended that the IRS use barcode and OCR technology.

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Career agent confirmed to lead ATF despite GOP’s past push for the agency’s elimination

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 15:31:05 -0400

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed, 59-39, Robert Cekada, a career federal law enforcement officer, as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, an agency that has historically attracted the GOP’s ire.

Cekada has been serving as the ATF’s deputy director for about a year. He joined the agency in 2005 as a special agent and has been promoted several times. Cekada is also a member of the Senior Executive Service.

“He knows how to lead the bureau because he’s tirelessly worked throughout the chain of command,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said during Cekada’s February confirmation hearing.

The new director's nomination was supported on Wednesday by all present Republicans as well as seven Senate Democrats.

At the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, the Justice Department recommended folding ATF into the Drug Enforcement Administration. Some congressional Republicans have proposed eliminating the agency, arguing that its work to combat the illegal use of firearms infringes on gun rights.

During his confirmation hearing, however, Cekada said that abolishing or defunding ATF would have “a negative impact on America’s communities” and that, pursuant to a Trump executive order, the agency is reviewing its regulations to assess any encroachments on the Second Amendment.

“ATF’s mission is not to burden lawful gun owners or undermine the Second Amendment. The right to keep and bear arms is a constitutional guarantee, and I'm committed to protecting and preserving it,” he said. “I am equally committed to supporting the men and women of ATF. They deserve clear mission focus, strong leadership, modern tools and accountability at every level.”

Cekada later added that he’s “worked with practically every ATF agent that's actually out here making cases, we all know each other.”

Dan Driscoll has been the acting ATF director while concurrently serving as Army secretary.

Cekada testified that there are about 2,400 ATF agents and that the Trump administration has directed the agency to increase that number to 3,000.

Like other federal law enforcement agencies, ATF has reassigned officers to support the administration’s mass deportation efforts. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, found in a fall 2025 analysis that the agency had sent nearly 30% of its total employees to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Cekada told lawmakers that only about 100 ATF agents are working on immigration enforcement. While he said that the reassignments are in alignment with the agency’s mission to deter violent crime, congressional Democrats didn’t buy his argument.

“I think it's really incontestable that if you need more agents to go after violent criminals that are using guns in the commission of crimes, then diverting some of the agents you already have — 100 agents — to work on immigration enforcement — often generally involving people who have no criminal record apart from being undocumented — is going to dilute your effectiveness,” said Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., during the confirmation hearing.

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IRS whistleblower program set for possible overhaul after bipartisan House vote

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 17:29:05 -0400

The House on Monday passed, 346-10, a bipartisan bill that would make several reforms to an IRS whistleblower program that has recovered billions from noncompliant taxpayers.

“This is real money returned to the Treasury that would otherwise have been lost,” said Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., the measure’s sponsor, during floor remarks. “In many cases, these are complex, high-dollar schemes that would not have been identified without insider information, proving that whistleblowers play an essential role in upholding the integrity of our tax code.”

The IRS Whistleblower Program Improvement Act (H.R. 7959) would:

Modify the standard for reviewing whistleblower award determinations in the U.S. Tax Court in order to allow new evidence to be introduced during appeal.
Permit whistleblowers to be anonymous before the Tax Court, unless there is a “societal interest” in disclosing their identity.
Require interest on certain whistleblower payments if the IRS does not meet the deadline to inform the individual of an award recommendation, as part of an effort to ensure the tax agency distributes payments in a timely manner.

“Whistleblowers often face uncertainty and long delays. And in some cases, they face real personal and professional risk just for coming forward,” said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., a cosponsor of the bill, in a statement. “We need to be doing everything we can to fix those problems.”

Kelly and Thompson are the chair and ranking member of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Tax.

In 2025, the IRS reported that it has collected about $7.5 billion as a result of protected disclosures since 2007, leading to more than $1.3 billion in awards to whistleblowers. According to the tax agency, payments tend to be 15 to 30% of funds received due to the whistleblower’s information.

The National Whistleblower Center nonprofit backed the bipartisan measure, arguing it would “revitalize” the IRS whistleblower program after experiencing declining financial recoveries in recent years. The right-leaning National Taxpayers Union nonprofit also endorsed the legislation.

The bill is now headed to the Senate. Provisions that are identical to the House-passed measure are also in the bipartisan Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act (S. 3931), which was introduced in February but has not yet received any votes.

A spokesperson for Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who has previously introduced similar legislation regarding the IRS whistleblower program, said in a statement to Government Executive that he “welcomes” passage of the House bill and will work with the sponsors of the Senate measure “to enact these important reforms into law.”

The IRS recently completed its first tax season since the Trump administration’s staffing reductions across government. The tax agency also had to contend with implementing changes to the tax code mandated by the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act as well as onboarding delays due to the fall 2025 government shutdown and federal hiring freeze.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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DHS funding bill stalls as House GOP seeks changes to Senate deal

Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:20:16 -0400

House Speaker Mike Johnson wants to make changes to a Senate-passed bill that would end the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, a move that will further delay funding and prolong the stalemate that began in mid-February.

The holdup could again interrupt paychecks for workers at the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Emergency Management Agency, both of which are part of DHS. Huge backups in airline security lines resulted in March when TSA officers went without pay for weeks until the administration scrambled to reprogram funds.

Johnson, R-La., has chosen not to negotiate potential tweaks in the funding bill with Senate Democrats, who will be needed to advance it if the House makes alterations.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during a Tuesday afternoon press conference the bill that’s stalled in the House doesn’t “need tweaks.”

“They're just stuck. So they come up with, ‘We need some technical changes,’” he said. “Hold up national security for technical changes? It's absurd. They can pass the bill right now.”

Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, said during a brief interview she was “flabbergasted” by Johnson’s comments.

She added during the press conference she has “no idea what technical changes they're looking at.”

House hasn’t voted on DHS funding

The Senate unanimously passed a bill to fund the vast majority of the Department of Homeland Security in late March and again in early April. Johnson hasn’t put it to the House floor for a vote, blocking it from becoming law.

The legislation doesn't include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol, a compromise negotiated after Republicans and Democrats were unable to broker agreement on guardrails for immigration enforcement operations.

Republicans plan to provide upwards of $70 billion in additional spending for ICE and Border Patrol in a party-line budget reconciliation bill they hope to pass in the coming weeks.

Johnson said last week he believes the “sequencing is important” on when each of the two bills becomes law. But time is running out for the tens of thousands of federal workers, who are about to miss out on their paychecks once again.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement the executive order President Donald Trump signed earlier this month to pay all DHS employees despite the funding lapse can only stretch so far.

“That money is dried up if I continue down this path the first week of May,” Mullin said. “My payroll through DHS is just over $1.6 billion every two weeks so the money is going extremely fast and once that happens there is no emergency funds after that.”

‘We’ve got to get these agencies funded’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he’s working with House GOP leaders to “massage” the DHS funding bill in hopes it will become law sometime soon.

“I'm very sympathetic,” he said. “We talked last night and he's got to manage his challenges there. We have to manage our challenges here. But one way or the other, we've got to get these agencies funded.”

The disconnect between House Republicans and their Senate GOP counterparts on when to fund DHS is just one of several challenges party leaders are attempting to address this week.

“We're trying as best we can to coordinate strategy with the House. But, you know, it's a unique situation. We've got very narrow margins and people with real strong opinions,” Thune said. “So it's going to take, obviously, I think, the heavy involvement of the White House to bust some of these things loose. But we're trying as best we can to ensure that we can get all of these issues across the finish line and ultimately on the president's desk.”

Republican leaders will need the support of their own members as well as at least some Democrats in order to get major legislation, including the DHS funding bill, to Trump.

But as of midday Tuesday, it didn’t appear they’d looped in key negotiators on possible changes to the Senate-passed spending bill.

Recess next week

Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt, chairwoman of the subcommittee in charge of funding DHS, said she didn’t know what changes House GOP leaders wanted to make.

“I am not aware. I just know that we need to find a pathway forward,” she said. “And nobody should be leaving here, or certainly flying off to (congressional delegation trips), until we do.”

Both chambers of Congress are scheduled to leave on Thursday for a weeklong break.

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, ranking member on the DHS funding panel, said House Republicans hadn’t reached out to him or his staff.

“I don't know why he's making this more complicated than it needs to be,” he said. “Our bill, which passed the Senate 100 to zero, would pass the House easily.”

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Former civil servants aim to shape policy as members of Congress

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:19:30 -0400

After Donald Trump was re-elected in 2024, Chris Backemeyer urged the federal employees he supervised not to leave their jobs.

“I was trying to encourage them to stay in government and to continue their public service,” he said. “I tried to explain how, even when parties change, we're nonpartisan civil servants who are supposed to be implementing their policies, you’ll still find rewarding work, we need your expertise — all that sort of thing.”

Soon after, however, the senior State Department official realized that this administration change would be different from the several other transfers of power he had previously experienced.

“The [Department of Government Efficiency] came in, and they just wanted me to fire a lot of people. We were asked to basically pick 15%, and that's when I realized that I was playing by different rules,” he said. “I was trying to be faithful to the oath that I took to the Constitution. But there wasn't any mission or purpose left when DOGE came in. It was just about destruction and retribution. That's when I decided to leave.”

But Backemeyer could be returning to the federal government soon; this time as a member of Congress. He is one of dozens of former civil servants who left or were pushed out under Trump who are now running for political office.

Backemeyer, a Democrat, is a candidate for a House seat in Nebraska, where he was born and raised.

He argued that his experience in government, which included overseeing billions in foreign assistance, advising Vice President Kamala Harris on national security and participating in nuclear negotiations with Iran, would bolster his ability as a lawmaker to identify waste, fraud and abuse.

“A lot of the inefficiencies in federal agencies are a result of reporting requirements and appropriations that are required to be made for pet projects,” Backemeyer said. “In Congress, I want to work really hard to identify places where we can find more efficiency and try to get rid of some of the special interest projects that gum up the works and make our government less efficient.”

Backemeyer switched careers after 9/11, which resulted in him spending about two decades at the State Department. Today, however, he cautions people interested in public service about working for the federal government.

“I certainly have not discouraged people from considering public service, either through the civil service or otherwise in the federal government, but it is a hard place to be,” he said. “I have warned people that it's a difficult time to be in those jobs. As a general matter, I encourage everybody to figure out how they can find their own corner to fight in right now, because the only way that we reunite our country and move forward is through an active public debate and civic activism.”

Likewise, Lauren Reinhold, a Democrat running for a congressional seat in Kansas, originally intended to remain working in government during Trump’s second term. Both of her parents were federal employees, and she had enjoyed serving in several different roles at the Social Security Administration as well as the National Labor Relations Board.

But she chose to leave after the Trump administration began implementing Schedule Policy/Career, which would remove civil service job protections for tens of thousands of federal employees.

“I realized the job would become loyalty-based, patronage-based and not about serving the public anymore and [instead] about serving essentially a potentially authoritarian government,” she said.

Rather than go into the private sector, she decided to run for Congress in response to the Trump administration’s reforms and cuts to agencies across the federal government, including at SSA.

“It was so upsetting to me that I've felt driven to run for this office to fight for Kansans and our federal services,” she said. “And I wanted to keep serving, so that's why I didn't go into a for- profit or corporate environment.”

Similarly, Terry Jackson, who left his Justice Department job under a settlement that resolved claims of disability discrimination with respect to the Trump administration’s crackdown on telework and remote work, is running for a House seat in Maryland.

“I want to take these experiences that I have had — being in the military, being a federal employee, seeing how government works — I have the lived experience that I can take with me to Congress, and I can advocate for people who experience these types of situations,” he previously told Government Executive for an article about federal employees with disabilities being ordered to work in-person despite exceptions for them from the return-to-office directive.

Former feds are also competing in Republican primaries. For example, Kim Farington, who served in the federal government for more than 30 years, is running to challenge Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. She mostly worked in agency finance roles and says on her campaign website that her first priority is to “expose and eliminate inefficiencies, waste, and fraud in government spending, and reduce the national debt.”

A New York Times analysis found at least 36 first-time political candidates who left their federal jobs in 2025.

Reinhold hopes that she — and other former feds running for elected office — can increase trust in government, which has been at a historical low for years.

“I want to be an ambassador to restore trust in our federal services. Get people to recognize the importance of federal services — the ways they depend on it, even if they don't agree with everything the way it's done,” she said. “For the most part, people see my experience as good. I'm so excited, not just for myself, but all these other candidates who are running for offices at the state, local and federal level because we're going to really be able to impact government and bring trust back to government and make it more effective.”

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The ‘doers’ need a budget: Why a $100 million council fund can end federal management failures

Dana Fowler — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0400

When a problem exists within one federal agency, it’s a safe bet it exists elsewhere — maybe everywhere. But how would any agency leader know that? Only by bringing key executives together will you discern a pattern, identify the scale and scope of the problem, and be able to develop and implement potential solutions.

A forum exists today to focus on cross-government management issues and solve big problems — in theory. In practice, the Federal Executive Councils are vastly underutilized, underfunded and ultimately without ‘power’ to solve real cross-agency issues. Today’s chaotic environment challenges us to rethink and repurpose the councils into a more functional, directed and empowered community.

Members of the councils may not have chainsaws, but they do have deep knowledge of Financial Management (CFO), Acquisition (CAO), Data (CDO), Human Capital (CHCO), Information Technology (CIO), Grants (GMO), Evaluation (EO), Performance (PIO), Privacy (CPO) and Real Property. These are not the “talking heads” you see on the news or even those leading critical federal programs. These are the leaders who ensure those folks can do their jobs. These are career executives whose work keeps the lights on, pays the bills, ensures contracts are legal and programs are evaluated. These are the people who know where the systems are broken, what legislation ties their hands and where critical investments can solve pervasive problems.

Currently, the policy direction for management functions within the federal government is established by the Office of Management and Budget, specifically the M-side (Management) as they are known. While well intentioned, staff on this side of OMB is overextended and generally has limited agency experience. Policy is often developed by OMB staffers without any input from the agency staff — “the doers” — who must implement these government-wide directives. These agency staff often have both deep technical knowledge in the key operational areas — IT, procurement, HR, data collection and reporting — as well as broad-based knowledge of potential implementation challenges, unintended consequences, hidden costs and tradeoffs.

Even when input from agencies is solicited, this is typically more performative than informative, often via working groups in which agencies are expected to salute and not raise any questions or concerns.

This disconnect between OMB and agencies can lead to fundamental errors in policy, undermining future implementation. Further, when the M-side releases a guidance document directing agencies to comply, there is absolutely no incentive to do so beyond avoiding the ‘stick’ — and even that is limited as it is the B-side (Budget) who control the purse strings. Neither side of OMB has money to fund these new tasks, so most are assimilated by existing functions with limited staffing. The directives are thus relegated to simply one more ‘compliance’ task.

Alternatively, the Federal Executive Councils, properly unleashed, could craft management policies based on real experience “in the trenches” at agencies. Proposed policies could be sufficiently pressure tested with the broad agency representation on the councils and ensure implementation is possible within existing limitations. Ultimately, these councils could tackle and manage big challenges which have, to date, been slow to resolve, like fraud detection, budget transparency and acquisition streamlining.

Solving big problems that cross federal silos cannot be accomplished with current funding models. Federal appropriations law typically limits the use of funds to mission and mission-support. When a problem exists that extends beyond a single agency, there are tight controls on how dollars can be spent.

Currently, a small fund exists for the Federal Executive Councils and their innovations, but it is far less than it would take to solve these issues. As such, the current fund has been used for projects with relatively limited impact — handbooks for a specific council, trainings, shared hiring announcements, etc.. These monies are collected from existing agencies and their use is expanded by Congress. Imagine what could be accomplished with an unrestricted, direct appropriation to seasoned management executives, in the $100M or greater range, more than five times the current fund amount. Executives would stay plugged into their agency work, while spending a dedicated portion of their time on cross-federal work.

The time is ripe for big change, impactful change. Political appointees — with or without chainsaws — simply can’t do the job if they don’t understand the federal space, the policy constraints and the problems. Let’s use the Federal Executive Councils to confront the challenges and give them a budget that will allow them to innovate, test and scale solutions to tackle government’s biggest management problems. Members of our Federal Executive Councils are a virtually untapped resource for cost-effective, impactful, cross-agency solutions to some of the federal government’s most vexing challenges.

Dana Fowler, a former federal manager, is currently senior advisor for We the Doers, a nonprofit focused on government reform informed by career leaders. For a period of nine years, Ms. Fowler worked with the Executive Councils, first as deputy director of the Performance Improvement Council, then as deputy associate director of the Federal Executive Councils support team in the Office of Governmentwide Policy at GSA.

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Trump evacuated from White House Correspondents’ Dinner after shots fired

Jane Norman, States Newsroom — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 22:33:25 -0400

President Donald Trump was declared safe by the Secret Service after being evacuated from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at a hotel in Washington, D.C., on Saturday night after shots were fired.

Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the president would deliver a statement in the briefing room at the White House later Saturday night. In a social media post, Trump said he was in “perfect condition.”

Anthony Guglielmi, a Secret Service spokesman, said in a statement on social media the incident occurred near the main magnetometer screening area at the dinner. “The president and first lady are safe along with all protectees,” he said. “One individual is in custody.”

An initial press pool report from the hotel after the shooting occurred said, “There were several loud bangs, and the Secret Service, with guns drawn, rushed the pool out of the room. The Secret Service pushed us back, screaming ‘Shots fired.’”

Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News said on social media shortly after 9 p.m. Eastern that she was behind the podium with other guests, “in a hold,” and Trump was still down the hall and did not want to leave.

Trump himself confirmed that in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.

“Quite an evening in D.C. Secret Service and Law Enforcement did a fantastic job,” he wrote. “They acted quickly and bravely. The shooter has been apprehended, and I have recommended that we ‘LET THE SHOW GO ON’ but, will entirely be guided by Law Enforcement. They will make a decision shortly. Regardless of that decision, the evening will be much different than planned, and we’ll just, plain, have to do it again. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said on air that he heard “a really loud blasting away,” and the next thing he knew, he was being pushed to the floor by police. “I was just a few feet away from the gunman, and it was a really scary moment,” Blitzer said.

The annual formal dinner, at the Washington Hilton hotel, is hosted by an organization made up of journalists who cover the White House. Trump’s invitation to the event had been controversial, given his frequent personal attacks on reporters and the news media in general.

The Hilton was also the site of another attack on a president when, on the afternoon of March 30, 1981, gunman John Hinckley shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan while he was leaving the hotel. Reagan recovered after a stay in the hospital. Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, also was wounded.

Details of the shooter’s motive and plan were not immediately clear, but if the shooter was targeting Trump, it would be the third attempt on his life.

Trump was injured in an assassination attempt during a campaign stop in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. Another suspected assassin was arrested near Trump’s home in Florida on Sept. 15 of that year.

This is a breaking report that will be updated.

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Senate advances GOP budget blueprint to boost ICE and Border Patrol funding

Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:10:19 -0400

Senate Republicans approved a budget resolution early Thursday intended to speed the way for billions for immigration enforcement, sending the measure to the House, where GOP lawmakers in that chamber need to adopt it to unlock the reconciliation process.

The 50-48 vote followed a marathon amendment voting session that Democrats used to highlight policy differences on cost-of-living issues and stalled federal emergency relief dollars for states.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul were the two Republicans to vote against approving the measure. Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Mark Warner, D-Va., did not vote.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said just before the vote-a-rama began that Democrats would put Republicans on the record about the soaring cost of living and the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

“America will see even more clearly tonight where the Republicans are — not on the side of lowering costs, but on the side of masked agents occupying our streets,” he said.

Republicans plan to use the complex budget reconciliation process, which avoids the need for Democratic support in the Senate, to provide between $70 billion and $140 billion in additional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol.

The money is supposed to cover those agencies for the next three years, avoiding the need for Republicans to negotiate constraints on immigration activities with Democrats, who have been calling for guardrails since federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.

When combined with the Senate-passed bill that funds the vast majority of the Department of Homeland Security for the current fiscal year, the two pieces of legislation are expected to end the ongoing shutdown at that department, which began in mid-February.

One amendment adopted, 15 turned down

Senators ultimately debated 16 amendments, 12 offered by Democrats and four proposed by Republicans. The only one adopted was from South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, which senators approved on a 98-0 vote.

The proposal would create a reserve fund to bolster federal immigration agents’ ability to detain and deport adults who entered the country without proper documentation and were then convicted of rape, murder or sexual abuse of a minor.

“Everybody in this body should be for this,” Graham said. “These people need to be caught, put in jail or kicked out of our country.”

Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said he supported the amendment because “under current law, undocumented immigrants who are convicted of rape, murder or sexual abuse of a minor are subject to mandatory detention and deportation.”

“What we object to is what is happening in the streets of Minneapolis and Chicago,” he added.

SAVE America Act sidelined

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy tried but was ultimately unable to convince his colleagues to add a new set of instructions to the budget resolution that would have allowed the Rules & Administration Committee to write a voter identification law.

Kennedy said he wanted that bill to have three provisions.

“Require that in federal elections, you have to be an American citizen to vote and provide for the provisions to enforce that. Number two, it would require that in federal elections, you have to prove you are who you say you are in order to vote, and it would provide provisions to enforce that,” he said. “Number three, it further instructs the Rules Committee that we're going to go back to having an Election Day and not an election month, and it instructs the Rules Committee to provide the provisions to enforce that.”

California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla, the ranking member of the rules panel, opposed the amendment during debate, saying he couldn’t believe lawmakers were once again experiencing a “partisan attempt to rush through what I refer to as a solution in search of a problem.”

“Despite the president's claims, there is zero evidence of massive voter fraud across the country, which is the premise of these proposals,” he said. “So not only is it a solution in search of a problem, to paraphrase a wise man, this measure is all foam and no beer.”

Padilla added that a provision in Kennedy’s amendment would have required states to count ballots within 36 hours of an election, a new mandate he said could cause considerable problems for larger states with millions of voters.

“It's unfortunate elections administration has been turned into a partisan issue,” he said. “I actually ask our colleagues to protect the early voters, not just in my state but in yours. Protect vote-by-mail opportunities, not just in my state but in yours. Let's protect women who are married and change their name and their right to vote, not just in my state but in yours.”

Senators did not agree to waive a point of order against Kennedy’s amendment on a 48-50 vote. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Murkowski and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted with Democrats.

Ban on Planned Parenthood funding via Medicaid

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley tried unsuccessfully to create a pathway to extend the one-year prohibition on Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood that the GOP included in its “big, beautiful” law. That funding ban expires on July 4.

Hawley didn’t speak about abortion access during debate but focused his criticism of the organization on gender-affirming health care services for transgender youth.

“Under no circumstance should Medicaid money dedicated to the poor and the needy be used for transgender surgeries and treatments for minor children,” he said. “It is a moral outrage. This body has a duty to stand against it.”

Planned Parenthood’s website states the organization provides surgery referrals as well as hormone therapy, puberty blockers and “transition support.”

Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden argued the amendment represented “Republicans’ latest attempt to strip women of the health care they need and depend on so that they can go score some political points.”

Senators didn’t agree to waive a point of order against the amendment, which would have allowed it to move forward, by a vote of 50-48. Collins and Murkowski voted with Democrats.

Private equity and home ownership

Senators rejected an amendment from Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley that would have addressed the rising cost of housing after he invoked comments President Donald Trump made during his State of the Union address.

“We have an opportunity tonight to send a message that we agree with the president, that we have a challenge in home ownership, because home ownership is dying,” Merkley said. “And one of the factors is private equity buying up the homes.”

Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno spoke out against adopting the amendment, saying lawmakers have already addressed it in a bipartisan way.

“I obviously urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, because we've already passed it,” he said. “We've already solved this problem. In fact, congratulations to all of us. 89 to 10. We banned institutional ownership of single-family homes. I think that's fantastic.”

The Senate voted in March to approve a bill designed to increase the country’s housing supply, according to reporting from NPR. But since the House has approved a bill of its own, the two chambers will need to work out their differences before any housing bill becomes law.

Senators did not agree to adopt Merkley’s amendment following a 46-52 party-line vote.

Disaster relief funds from FEMA

California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff proposed an amendment that would have addressed stalled funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which he said is “holding more than $3 billion in disaster relief funding for California.”

“But as we debate this budget resolution, I know our state of California is not alone,” he said. “North Carolina is waiting on millions in relief designated for Hurricane Helene in 2024. Kentucky saw landslides and flooding just weeks after Los Angeles County burned. Florida and the Gulf Coast have also been battered. Texas communities under siege from last year's floods have still not seen the federal relief their communities need and deserve.”

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford opposed the amendment, saying that while he agrees FEMA funds need to get to communities, the best way to do that is for the House to pass the annual funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, which the Senate already approved.

House GOP leaders are holding on to that bill instead of putting it on the floor as they wait for the reconciliation process to play out. That Senate-passed DHS bill funds FEMA and all of the agencies that make up the department except ICE and Border Patrol.

“Our challenge has been, we've been in a government shutdown on DHS now for two months," Lankford said. "We've got to be able to get those funds released. That means we've got to get DHS funding completely done for all of DHS. We have FEMA employees that are being paid but they don't have program dollars that they can actually release.”

The Senate rejected the amendment following a 49-49 vote. Collins, Florida Sen. Ashley Moody and Murkowski voted with Democrats.

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Fed employee appeals system independence at stake in new Supreme Court brief

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0400

A group of Senate Democrats on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court decision that enabled President Donald Trump to fire a member of their party from the agency that adjudicates federal employees’ appeals of adverse personnel actions.

In 2025, the president removed Merit Systems Protection Board member Cathy Harris as well as several other Democratic leaders of independent agencies.

Harris has argued that her firing violates the law, which stipulates that MSPB board members can only be removed for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” A federal appeals court in December, however, determined her ouster was lawful because “Congress may not restrict the president’s ability to remove principal officers who wield substantial executive power.”

In their amicus brief, Sens. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., Mark Warner, D-Va., Tim Kaine, D-Va., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., contended that allowing a president to fire an MSPB member would upend the appeals system Congress set up for civil servants.

“The MSPB’s independence is central to the proper functioning of the civil service system,” they wrote. “Congress enacted the [Civil Service Reform Act] amid a growing consensus that the existing regime had become politically corrupted and inefficient. Congress’ answer to political meddling in the civil service was to create an independent MSPB to adjudicate federal employee claims.”

The Supreme Court has already heard arguments in a similar case regarding Trump’s firing of Democratic Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. Harris’ attorneys, however, have argued that the MSPB member’s removal is a legally distinct matter.

There can be up to three members of the MSPB, and no more than two can be from the same political party. The agency currently has two Republican members.

The MSPB in March ruled that the president has the authority to remove immigration judges and similar officials on an at-will basis. In response, a group of Senate Democrats likewise urged a federal court to expedite its consideration of two immigration judges’ appeal of their firings.

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Executive order on mail ballots tests limits of Postal Service independence

Jonathan Shorman, States Newsroom — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:03:26 -0400

President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail voting would shatter decades of U.S. Postal Service independence intended to shield it from partisan politics, postal experts and attorneys say.

Postal experts said Trump ordering the postmaster general to take any action — let alone on a matter as sensitive as elections — violates guardrails in federal law against presidential control of the mail. Multiple people with deep knowledge of Postal Service history said they could not recall a similar order in the agency’s modern era.

“For the president to direct the postmaster general to do anything, including handling these ballots, is contrary to the statutes, contrary to law,” said James Campbell Jr., an attorney in the Washington, D.C., area who consults on postal law.

The order, signed March 31, attracted swift condemnation as an unconstitutional attempt by Trump to control state-run elections. If it stands, the directive would also represent a White House power grab over the Postal Service, which remains a key part of American life and business.

Trump’s order directs the postmaster general, who acts as the Postal Service’s CEO, to set out rules that would require states to notify the Postal Service if they intend to send ballots through the mail during federal elections. States that want to use the mail would be required to provide lists of mail voters to the Postal Service, which would be prohibited from delivering ballots to individuals not on a list.

A Board of Governors leads the Postal Service and holds the power to hire and fire the postmaster general. No more than five of the nine governors may belong to the same political party.

While presidents nominate the governors and the Senate confirms them, they serve seven-year terms. The length, in theory, insulates them from political pressure.

S. David Fineman, a Philadelphia attorney nominated to the Board of Governors by President Bill Clinton who served as its chairman from 2003 to 2005, said he had never heard of the White House or a president directing the postmaster general to take certain actions. He called the executive order highly unusual.

“The postmaster general serves at the pleasure of the board,” Fineman said.

The board currently has only four members, all appointed by President Joe Biden, and five vacancies. Trump has sent four nominations to the U.S. Senate this year. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has not scheduled confirmation hearings for the nominees.

Cash-strapped service

Trump has expressed interest in having more control over the mail.

Last year, he floated the possibility of merging the Postal Service with the Commerce Department, a move that would require approval by Congress. The Washington Post reported in February 2025 that Trump was expected to try to fire the Board of Governors and take control of the Postal Service.

The Trump administration takes a dim view of independent agencies. Many allies of the president subscribe to the unitary executive theory, the idea that the U.S. Constitution grants the president full power over the entirety of the executive branch — meaning Congress cannot constitutionally create agencies that exist outside of White House control.

Trump has moved to assert authority over a number of independent and quasi-independent agencies since taking office, most notably the Federal Reserve. The Department of Justice is investigating cost overruns on a Federal Reserve construction project, widely seen as a pretext to target Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate policy has angered Trump.

The Postal Service is under tremendous financial pressure — potentially making it more vulnerable to proposals to bring it under White House control. Mail volume peaked in 2006 at 213 billion pieces that year. The Postal Service today handles 109 billion pieces annually.

The current postmaster general, David Steiner, told a U.S. House committee last month that the Postal Service will run out of cash within a year without changes to its prices and operations. The Postal Service is generally funded through stamps and other forms of user revenue, not by tax dollars.

Steiner emphasized the independent nature of the Postal Service throughout his prepared testimony. He has laid out a number of options to improve the Postal Service’s financial stability, including changes to pension funding and raising its borrowing limit from $15 billion, a level that has remained unchanged since 1992.

“It is important to remember that we face these challenges as a self-financed, independent establishment of the Executive Branch,” Steiner wrote.

Congress approved sweeping legislation in 1970 reorganizing the U.S. Post Office Department into the U.S. Postal Service, an independent corporation. Before that, the postmaster general was a Cabinet-level position nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Trump’s order marks “a dramatic shift away from the intent of the 1970 legislation to insulate the Postal Service from interference,” Joseph M. Adelman, a history professor at Framingham State University in Massachusetts who has researched mail history, said.

Election security

The White House did not directly answer States Newsroom’s questions about Trump’s views on the independence of the Postal Service or the legal justification for the executive order.

“Election integrity has always been a top priority for President Trump, and the American people sent him back to the White House because they overwhelmingly supported his commonsense election integrity agenda,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

“The president will do everything in his power to lawfully defend the safety and security of American elections and to ensure that only American citizens are voting in them.”

Jackson also called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to prove their citizenship when registering.

The Postal Service did not answer questions about how it plans to respond to the order. A USPS spokesperson said only that the Postal Service was reviewing it.

Lawsuits

Steiner has indicated he is awaiting a court decision on how to proceed.

“If a court says that’s not what the law means, we’ll follow that,” Steiner told The New York Times after the executive order was signed. “And so from our perspective, we don’t get involved in policy or law, we just follow the law.”

The order on mail ballots faces at least five lawsuits. The Democratic National Committee, top Democrats in Congress and Democratic state officials have all sued. The legal challenges emphasize the Postal Service’s independence in federal law.

The lawsuit filed by the DNC, top Democratic lawmakers and other Democratic campaign groups asserts the Postal Service is structured to operate independently of partisan politics. The complaint calls the Postal Service “indispensable” to voting by mail, noting that it delivered more than 222 million pieces of ballot mail in 2024, including nearly 100 million general election ballots.

A dozen Republican state attorneys general filed motions in court this week seeking to defend the executive order from the Democratic legal challenges. The motions call the order an example of cooperative federalism to provide states with optional resources to help protect their elections.

The GOP officials argue the Democrats lack standing to challenge the Postal Service provisions of the order and that their objections are premature because the Postal Service has not finalized any new rules on mail ballots.

The order “simply directs” the Postal Service “to initiate rulemaking — it does not regulate the states directly and it does not directly inhibit anyone’s voting rights,” a court filing by the state attorneys general says.

The states involved in the Republican-led defense of the order include Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas.

Vote-by-mail

Mail-in voting surged in the 2020 general election amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when 43% of voters cast their votes by mail. The percentage of voters mailing their ballots has fallen from that peak but remains above pre-pandemic levels. About 30% of voters cast mail ballots in 2024, according to data gathered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

During the 2024 election, 584,463 mail ballots returned by voters were rejected by election officials — 1.2% of returned mail ballots. About 18% of those ballots were rejected because they did not arrive on time.

American Postal Workers Union President Jonathan Smith said in a statement that the Postal Service does not block mailers from sending letters or refuse to deliver letters because of the identity of the sender. Postal workers take extraordinary measures to ensure ballots reach their destinations promptly and securely, he said.

“Postal workers take the sanctity of the mail seriously, and every process and policy of the Postal Service ensures that mail is accepted, processed and delivered, no matter who sent it or where it is going,” Smith said.

On Monday, more than 100 U.S. House Democrats sent a letter to Trump demanding he refrain from future actions that undermine the Postal Service’s independence and calling on him to rescind the executive order. The letter says the order sets “a dangerous precedent for political interference” in postal service operations.

Senate Democrats followed up with a letter to Steiner and the USPS Board of Governors on Tuesday, urging the Postal Service not to implement the order. The letter, signed by 37 senators, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, calls the Postal Service’s independence a “hallmark” of its operations.

“The Postal Service doesn’t care which politicians you may support,” Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, said on the Senate floor last week. “Its only priority is to deliver the mail to every community in the country.”

“The president is now trying to corrupt this mission,” Peters, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees USPS, said. “If the president is successful in forcing the Postal Service to play a role in running elections, he will completely erode the trust of this storied institution.”

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Experts say Trump inflated his deregulation numbers, but his process changes are here to stay

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 13:32:08 -0400

Regulatory experts across the ideological spectrum agreed that the Trump administration overstated how successful it has been at cutting regulations. But they also agree that the actions officials took over the past year have changed the traditional methods for creating — and repealing — rules, setting the stage for more deregulation for the rest of the president’s second term.

10:1

At the start of his second term, Trump signed a directive requiring agencies to find 10 existing rules to be repealed any time they propose a new regulation. The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs reported that officials far exceeded that threshold — issuing 129 deregulatory actions for every new regulation over the first eight months of the administration.

An analysis by the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, however, found that “OIRA gamed its methodology to produce a higher ratio.”

Specifically, administration officials only considered new regulations to be significant rules (generally those that have an annual effect on the economy of at least $100 million). In contrast, they took a broader view of what counted as a deregulatory action, including repealing regulations that were no longer in effect as well as guidance documents, policy letters and internal agency materials.

“There is a legitimate policy case for counting them, as [guidance documents, etc.] can impose real compliance burdens on businesses and individuals even when they never go through a notice-and-comment rulemaking process,” wrote Tambudzai Charumbira (Gundani), a research assistant at the Center. “Whenever there’s a party changeover in the White House, incoming administrations immediately reverse the outgoing administration’s sub-regulatory output. It’s the low-hanging fruit that every administration plucks.”

Nevertheless, the Center’s analysis found that Trump’s 10:1 rule may be slowing the pace of new regulations. In 2025, there were nearly 61,600 pages added to the Federal Register (where agency regulations are published), which is the lowest total in a president’s first year among recent administrations.

Dan Goldbeck — the director of regulatory policy at American Action Forum, a center-right think tank — emphasized that slowing down rulemaking is still important, even if it’s not outright deregulation.

“Perhaps the more significant item is just slowing the pace of new regulations,” he said. “That gives industry a better idea going forward of what they can expect in terms of not having some big regulatory surprise jump out at them.”

During Trump’s first term, when he required agencies to repeal two regulations for every new one, regulatory experts similarly found that officials inflated the number of deregulatory actions that they took but that the administration did also produce less rulemaking.

An Office of Management and Budget spokesperson said that the president’s deregulatory agenda is “a victory for the American people whether or not it is published in the Federal Register.”

“Last year, the Trump administration implemented 646 de-regulatory actions,” they said. “That includes the removal of radical, [diversity, equity and inclusion], unpopular, destructive and costly policies that were imposed through sub-regulatory guidance, and that’s how we removed them.”

Katie Tracy, a regulatory expert at the left-leaning Public Citizen nonprofit, argued that measuring the president’s deregulatory push is not just about quantity but also quality. As an example, she pointed to the EPA’s recent repeal of the Obama greenhouse gas endangerment finding, which the Trump administration characterized as “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”

“That's where I think that there's a bigger picture here. It's not just about some number of regulations. It's about what that represents,” she said. “It represents passing harm, passing cost, on to the public. Corporations don't want to pay for the harm they've imposed on communities.”

Reforms to the Rulemaking Process

Tracy also contended that the Trump administration’s actions, such as pushing out hundreds of thousands of federal employees and requiring independent regulatory boards (e.g. Federal Trade Commission) to run proposed rules through the White House, are weakening agencies’ ability to regulate industries.

“All of that is an effort to ensure that the White House is the one making the calls,” she said. “It's [no longer] what we've traditionally thought of as the agencies or people in the agencies — the subject-matter experts — who are able to make the calls.”

The Trump administration has also pushed agencies to speed up the repeal of regulations by skipping the public review steps. When an agency promulgates a new rule, or revokes one, it must seek, respond to and potentially incorporate public comment on the proposal — a process that usually takes at least a year.

Officials have instructed agencies, when repealing rules that are deemed unconstitutional or unlawful in light of recent Supreme Court rulings, to rely on the “good cause” exception. That statutory provision provides that agencies can skip notice and comment if doing so would be "impracticable, unnecessary or contrary to the public interest.”

Tracy said that Public Citizen is tracking the administration’s use of the “good cause” exception.

“It's been rarely used, but now we're seeing it used quite frequently without any justification for doing so,” she said. “So it's very clear that they don't want the public weighing in.”

Congressional Review Act

In recent history, the president and a politically aligned Congress have relied on the Congressional Review Act to repeal by simple majority rules that were promulgated at the end of the previous administration. During Trump’s first term, the GOP used the CRA to revoke 16 late Obama rules. President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats then took advantage of the law to repeal three Trump regulations.

According to American Action Forum, House and Senate Republicans in Trump’s second term have used the CRA to overturn 22 Biden rules. The GOP, however, has adopted a novel interpretation of the law, which is enabling them to repeal additional administrative actions from the previous president.

Under the CRA, Congress generally has a limited window to revoke regulations, which ended in spring 2025. But the Trump administration in January 2026 transmitted to Congress a 2023 public land order that protected about 225,500 acres of Minnesota land from mineral and geothermal mining for 20 years — making the order subject to repeal through the law.

Both the House and Senate have approved the measure (H.J. Res 140) revoking the Minnesota public land order. It’s awaiting Trump’s signature.

In floor remarks ahead of the vote, Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., argued that the CRA was never intended to be used to repeal years-old public land orders.

“What would you do if the shoe was on the other foot?” she asked her Republican colleagues. “What would you do if we set this precedent where we say that with a simple partisan majority, Congress can claw back a public land order that has been in place potentially for years or decades?”

Future Deregulation

At the end of Trump’s first term, the Health and Human Services Department issued the “sunset rule” that would automatically terminate the department’s regulations between five to 10 years after they are implemented unless officials conduct a review to determine their effectiveness. The Biden administration withdrew the rule before it was implemented.

Goldbeck, of AAF, argued that such reviews would enable agencies to measure expectations about the regulation when it’s being developed against its real-world impacts. He also predicted that the Trump administration will undertake a similar effort in the remaining three years of his second term.

“Now that they have the template in place, I feel like — whether it be at HHS or some other agency, or if they try to do it across all agencies, that would be pretty ambitious — but I would foresee some instances of it coming back,” he said.

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U.S. citizens shot by ICE urge Congress to rein in federal immigration agents

Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:08:33 -0400

Nearly all Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee failed to show up for a Wednesday hearing convened by Democrats to highlight President Donald Trump’s aggressive tactics in his mass deportation campaign that have ensnared U.S. citizens.

It marked a rare full committee hearing that Democrats were allowed to conduct because of Minority Day in the House.

Democrats used the opportunity to call witnesses who are U.S. citizens and were harmed, in some cases shot, by federal immigration officers. Lawmakers also focused on two U.S. citizens killed by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Following the deadly shootings in January, Democrats refused to approve any more funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, which has led to a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security since mid-February.

“Under President Trump, ICE and CBP have killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in cold blood, and shot, beat, harassed, arrested or locked up countless more innocent people,” the top Democrat on the committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said. “Congress cannot stand idly by while Americans are hurt and killed by their own government.”

Democrats also invited Trump officials tasked with crafting and carrying out the president’s immigration agenda: White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, the border czar.

Neither Miller nor Homan showed up. The White House did not answer questions from States Newsroom regarding Miller or Homan’s absence from the hearing.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson blamed Democrats for keeping “the Department of Homeland Security shuttered, not caring about vital services — like TSA, FEMA and ICE — going unfunded.”

“Instead of lying about President Trump’s extremely successful deportation operations of criminal illegal aliens, House Democrats should fully reopen the Department of Homeland Security and stop putting illegal aliens before American citizens,” Jackson said.

The chair of the committee, Andrew Garbarino, called Wednesday’s hearing “a distraction from the fact that DHS has been shut down for over 65 days and the security impacts of that (are) real.”

Garbarino, a New York Republican, and the other GOP lawmakers on the committee did not ask any of the witnesses any questions.

Americans under fire

The Americans harmed by federal immigration officials include:

Marimar Martinez, a Chicago preschool worker whom Border Patrol officers shot five times.
Rev. David Black, whom ICE officials shot in the face with pepper-ball rounds while he protested outside an Illinois detention facility.
George Retes Jr., an Army veteran in California whom immigration agents apprehended on his way to work, tear-gassed and kept detained for three days.
Ryan Ecklund, a real estate agent in Minnesota whom federal agents detained after he filmed them while at a grocery store.

Martinez has appeared in the past before Congress in unofficial Democratic events to share her story about how on Oct. 4, she was shot five times by Border Patrol agent Charles Exum.

DHS shared her photo online, falsely claimed she rammed into Border Patrol with her car and labeled her a domestic terrorist. The Trump administration tried to indict her on federal charges, but eventually dismissed the case against her.

“On Friday I was teaching the young children at the Montessori school and we were singing and dancing and getting ready for spooky season preparing fall activities to do the following week and on Saturday my own government was calling me a ‘domestic terrorist’ and I was in a federal detention center with bullet holes all over my body,” she told the committee. “There were times where I did not believe this was all real and then I would touch my bullet wounds and knew it was certainly real.”

She said she was concerned other people would be shot and killed by federal immigration agents, as Pretti and Good were.

“It’s bound to happen sooner or later if we don’t hold these agents accountable for their actions,” she said.

No apologies

Following the two deadly shootings by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, the leaders of ICE and CBP appeared before the Senate and House committees that have jurisdiction over DHS.

While there, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott and ICE acting head Todd Lyons refused to apologize to the families of Good and Pretti. Lyons has announced he will resign at the end of May, saying he wants to spend more time with his family.

The aggressive immigration deportation campaign in Minneapolis, which has a high Somali refugee population, also spurred calls from Republicans to push then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign. She stepped down last month after Senate Republicans grilled her over an ad campaign and slow response to providing disaster relief.

The president tapped former Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin to steer the department. The Senate last month confirmed Mullin.

One of the witnesses, Retes, said his goal is for Congress to pass legislation in order to hold federal immigration agents accountable.

“Federal officials are basically impossible to sue,” Retes said. “Federal agents basically have immunity.”

He added that he wants Congress to do something and expressed his frustration that “change doesn't move fast enough.”

Ecklund criticized federal agents within DHS and pointed out the irony of the department’s unofficial slogan of going after “the worst of the worst” in conducting immigration enforcement.

“‘Your best’ and the ‘best of DHS’ is the least that the American public deserve,” he said. “You have not given us your best.”

Martinez said agents are not held accountable.

“I’ve been through hell and back,” she said. “These agents — Charles Exum — have not even been held accountable for their actions.”

She added that she doesn’t even know if Exum is still working for CBP.

Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green asked Martinez if she would feel comfortable showing lawmakers where she was shot. She agreed and rolled up her sleeve, showing a dark scar on her upper arm, and pulled up her pants to show another wound across her upper thigh.

“It’s hard to manage all this, to even process what happened,” she said. “Being shot for protecting your community. I want the world to see my pain, my trauma. This is not something to joke about. This is my life.”

Green thanked her and told her that “you deserve justice.”

Minister shot with pepper balls

Black told the committee that he was “horrified by the radical evil being perpetrated by my government.”

He said he was outside a detention facility in Chicago and was in the middle of praying when he was shot by federal agents with pepper balls.

“I am outraged by the blasphemy of those who support brutal ICE and CBP tactics yet call themselves Christians,” he said. “They make a mockery of the sacrifice of God’s love on behalf of the world.

“Yet instead of living into Christ’s rich promise of a Kingdom of peace, freedom and prosperity, many of those calling themselves Christian are blindly supporting institutions like ICE and CBP, even as they dominate, coerce and terrorize American communities,” he continued.

The only path forward, he argued to lawmakers, is to dismantle ICE and CBP and redirect that funding to “support programs that feed the hungry, sate the thirsty, welcome strangers, clothe the naked and care for the sick — for in the words of Jesus, ‘just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’”

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Space Force scrambles to repair workforce as massive budget increase looms

Thomas Novelly — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:17:58 -0400

The Trump administration, which last year stripped the Space Force of 14 percent of its civilian workers, now wants the service to handle a budget more than twice as large.

The service’s 2027 budget request of $71.1 billion—way up from the $31.6 billion allocated in the current fiscal year—includes boosts for new space-based technologies and weapons in line with President Donald Trump’s “space superiority” executive order.

The administration official who is temporarily handling the duties of the Pentagon’s chief financial officer conceded that it’s a tall order.

“One of the major challenges for this budget is to be able to obligate dollars in a timely manner, because it's such a large increase,” said Jules W. Hurst III, who is performing the duties of the Under Secretary of War (Comptroller)/Chief Financial Officer.

But Hurst, a former Ranger-turned-legislative aide for House Speaker Mike Johnson, R.-La., downplayed the effects of the hastily implemented workforce cuts.

“We haven't been taking away workforce from areas that are involved in critical efforts like the [Defense Autonomous Working Group] or, you know, space acquisition, which is where a lot of this money goes,” he said in a Tuesday press briefing at the Pentagon.

In fact, Space Systems Command—the branch’s acquisitions arm—lost about 10 percent of its workforce in the wake of policies ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Service officials were already talking about the impending acquisition crunch last fall.

“We have a looming increase in acquisitions coming down the pike, and so that presents us with a really difficult situation of where we need to double down on our acquisition workforce, our acquisition training. We are in a situation where we barely have enough acquirers to do all of the work that we have now,” Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, acting assistant Air Force secretary for space acquisition and integration, said Nov. 20 at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event.

Now, the service is struggling to rehire people to fill the gaps.

Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, who leads Space Systems Command, told reporters at the Space Symposium conference in Colorado last week that he's faced with “a really challenging goal” to hire 100 civilians a month following the large number of departures.

“We've never hired that many people in a month,” said Garrant, who added that the most the command has hired in one month is 66 people. “It's really to get the workforce in place to execute all this funding that's coming our way.”

Garrant added that some of that has been “backfilling” positions from the Deferred Resignation Program. Other roles can’t be replaced because the service permanently lost those billets.

Of the $71 billion for the Space Force’s 2027 budget request, about $38 billion is for research, development, testing and evaluation initiatives. Nearly $10 billion would be for procurement of new technologies.

Space Force Lt. Gen Steven P. Whitney, the Joint Staff’s director of force structure, resources and assessment, told reporters that the new request supports a wide range of initiatives tied to Trump’s executive orders.

Whitney said it includes 31 national security space launches, $13 billion dollars to develop and field missile warning and tracking capabilities, development of two new GPS satellites and their supporting infrastructure, $5.9 billion for satellite communication systems, $7.7 billion for Airborne Moving Target Indication capabilities, and a $3.1 billion investment in the military’s next-generation space data network, which is tied to Trump’s sprawling Golden Dome missile defense program.

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Transportation touts air traffic control modernization, presses Congress for more funding

Natalie Alms — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy celebrated progress on the effort to modernize the U.S. air traffic control system on Tuesday, a year after rolling out a plan to do so, reminding Congress that he wants more money to finish the job.

A few workstreams are a “little behind,” but “for the most part, we’re on track to have this project completed before President [Donald] Trump leaves office,” Duffy said at a Transportation event celebrating the approximate one-year mark of the push to overhaul the air traffic control system within four years with new core infrastructure across automation, communication, surveillance and facilities.

“Congress should have faith in this DOT, in this FAA, because we are building, and we’re building now,” said Duffy, repeatedly emphasizing that his agency needs more funding to move the system from the analog world to the digital one. Congress put $12.5 billion toward the effort in Republicans’ ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ last summer, but Duffy has said that the plan will cost over $31 billion.

The government has been trying to modernize the U.S. national airspace system since 2003, with little success. That effort, called the Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen, was billed as a sweeping overhaul, but it yielded “only a fraction of the expected benefits” before the program’s office was shut down last year, according to DOT’s watchdog.

Bryan Bedford, head of the Federal Aviation Administration, told senators at a hearing last December that he was presented with a 680-page document last summer after he was confirmed, which he and Duffy decided to “scrap,” he said, “because it represented more of the same.”

Transportation tapped Peraton as the prime integrator for the new plan, focused on the air traffic control system and not the entire national airspace system, late last year.

The department said Tuesday that it has so far replaced almost 50% of the copper wires — which date back to the 1960s — within the air traffic telecommunication system.

Duffy also touted work done to install digital voice switches on radios at 40 locations nationwide, updating systems from a switchboard-like tool to a digital one.

DOT has also set up new surface awareness systems at 54 airports to help track planes and vehicles at airports, and it has transitioned 17 air traffic control towers to electronic flight strips — a digital solution to keep track of flights rather than using paper.

By the end of 2028, the department is aiming to update thousands of radios and network connections, hundreds of radars and more. Duffy has also emphasized the potential role of artificial intelligence when it comes to improving flight management.

Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, emphasized Tuesday that the technology advances being discussed are “not competition for the controller workforce.”

“What we bring to the table cannot be replicated,” he said. “It’s not a trade-off of controllers or equipment. It’s how we support controllers that are doing the job day in and day out.”

The FAA is modernizing at the same time as it’s trying to hire video game players as air traffic controllers at the agency, which has had staffing issues for years.

The modernization push is one of three pillars the FAA reorganized itself around earlier this year, alongside people and safety. Aviation safety has been in the spotlight since a midair collision near Ronald Reagan National Airport of an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a commercial flight last year killed 67 people.

In 2023, the FAA evaluated all its air traffic control systems after an outage of one system caused a shutdown of national airspace for about two hours while the over 30-year-old system was fixed. The outage caused over 1,300 flight cancellations.

Of 138 systems evaluated at the time by the FAA, half were deemed either unsustainable or potentially unsustainable, despite their critical impacts on the safety and efficiency of national airspace, according to the Government Accountability Office.

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OMB seeks details from agencies on their commercial buying, or lack thereof

Ross Wilkers — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 06:00:00 -0400

The Office of Management and Budget wants details from agencies on how they are complying with President Trump’s 2025 executive order calling for them to prioritize commercially available products and services in acquisitions.

Efforts to shift agencies in that direction date back almost three decades, including the signing of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 that requires agencies to give a preference to commercial offerings. Trump’s executive order sought to reinforce the policies outlined in FASA and further promote commercial acquisitions.

In a memo to agencies sent Friday, OMB Director Russ Vought writes that they have until May 4 to report every non-commercial contract award from April 2025 through September 2025. For any award exceeding $10 million, agencies must explain why they acquired a non-commercial offering and what they plan to do for the contract’s next option period.

Vought wrote that during the government’s 2024 fiscal year, more than two-thirds of total contract spend — as reported to the Federal Procurement Data System — was for non-commercial products and services. FPDS is the since-discontinued database that housed information on non-classified contract obligations across government.

That estimate includes $130 billion in what Vought called “non-commercial contracting for common services, such as professional support services, information technology and telecom services, and operation of facilities” that was acquired through cost-reimbursement contracts.

OMB is also putting in place a new consultation process for agencies if they plan a non-commercial buy, but sign-off from the agency’s political appointee responsible for acquisition is required before an agency can even go to OMB.

According to the memo, this means the agency’s chief acquisition officer must approve the request of the senior procurement executive to set up a non-commercial contract.

Those requests must include details on the contract’s duration and size, any market research efforts that informed the decision, whether the contract will be competed, cost analysis information, and other details on the requirements.

Requests must also include an “affirmative statement” from the agency’s political appointee overseeing acquisition that they support the career official’s determination to create a non-commercial contract.

Each agency has a policy official serving as a competition advocate, whose responsibilities include the promotion and advocacy of commercial acquisitions. As part of their reports to OMB due May 4, agencies must confirm whether that person is “at a level now lower than the head of the contracting activity or deputy (Senior Procurement Executive).”

OMB’s memo also details how the competition advocate is also responsible for making recommendations to SPE officials on maximizing commercial purchases, as well as working with the agency’s small business director on lowering barriers to entry for commercial providers and new entrants.

Competition advocates also work with the Procurement Committee on E-Government to review and improve data collection protocols, plus support the SPE in developing annual process reports for submission to OMB.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Contractors sue to block Trump’s federal DEI executive order

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:20:06 -0400

A coalition that includes the National Association of Minority Contractors and several higher education groups on Monday filed a lawsuit to block a recent Trump executive order targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs at federal contracting companies.

“For centuries, minority-owned businesses have faced discrimination. This executive order is aimed at undermining the very policies that work to address that discrimination and move the nation toward fairness and inclusion,” said Wendell R. Stemley, national president of NAMC, in a statement. “These policies are not always successful, but we know one thing for sure, we will not have success if we do not even try. And the first step in trying must be to openly discuss race and discrimination free from government censorship.”

The executive order prohibits federal contractors and subcontractors from engaging in “racially discriminatory DEI activities.” Noncompliance could lead to the termination or suspension of the contract, being barred from future government contracting opportunities and being sued by the Justice Department.

While contractors were already subject to anti-DEI directives that the president enacted at the start of his second term, Trump said that another order was necessary because “some entities continue to engage in DEI activities and often attempt to conceal their efforts to do so.”

Attorneys for the coalition argued in their filing that the executive order is unconstitutional.

“The administration views discussion of race and ethnicity as unlawful, and the very concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion as discriminatory. But that is flat wrong,” they wrote. “The [executive] order sanctions legal, and laudable, expression on race or ethnicity, and in doing so, violates the free speech, free association and due process rights of plaintiffs and their members.”

Parties in the lawsuit also reported that the directive could cause them to refrain from certain activities that might run afoul of the directive.

For example, NAMC’s Washington, D.C., area chapter said it was “anxious” about hosting future events that are similar to a recent mayoral candidate forum it sponsored with a Black business community organization. And a member of NAMC may stop advertising jobs in a local newspaper targeted to Black readers due to the executive order.

Democracy Forward, a national legal nonprofit, is handling litigation for the plaintiffs. NAMC is additionally represented by the Minority Business Enterprise Legal Defense and Education Fund.

“At its core, the executive order is a gag rule dressed up as a contract clause,” said Sarah von der Lippe, pro bono chief counsel of MBELDEF. “It demands minority-owned businesses trade their First Amendment right to speak about race and discrimination for fair access to federal contracts. The Constitution does not permit that trade.”

The Justice Department this month agreed on a $17.1 million settlement with IBM over DEI programs, which appeared to be the first such agreement with a federal contractor. In the settlement document, the company denied that it participated in the “covered conduct.”

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Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer to step down amid misconduct allegations

Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 13:29:18 -0400

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer will step down from her post, the Trump administration announced Monday, following multiple reports alleging work misconduct, including misuse of funds and more.

Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican from Oregon who lost her U.S. House reelection bid in 2024, will take a role in the private sector, White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung wrote in a social media post.

"She has done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives," Cheung said.

Keith Sonderling will lead the agency as acting secretary of Labor, he added. Sonderling also worked at the Department of Labor during the first Trump administration, in the Wage and Hour Division.

Chavez-DeRemer is the most recent member of the Donald Trump Cabinet to be ousted, following former Attorney General Pam Bondi and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

The Department of Labor's independent watchdog started an investigation into Chavez-DeRemer and her top aides over allegations of sending inappropriate messages to young staffers at the department, according to The New York Times.

The department’s inspector general was also investigating reports of misuse of department funds for personal travel and allegations Chavez-DeRemer had an extramarital affair with a member of her security detail.

Separately, her husband, Dr. Shawn DeRemer, was barred from entering the Department of Labor after female staffers said he touched them inappropriately, according to the Times.

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GSA and OPM will soon share the same headquarters

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:14:14 -0400

The leaders of the General Services Administration and Office of Personnel Management on Monday announced that their agencies will co-locate in the same renovated Washington, D.C., headquarters building beginning in December 2028 as part of the Trump administration’s initiative to reduce the amount of real estate that the federal government occupies.

“This is bigger than a relocation. This is a blueprint,” said GSA Administrator Edward Forst at a press conference. “It's a blueprint for a government that takes responsibility, that works collaboratively and delivers results. At GSA that's our mission, and today we're going to lead by example.”

In July, GSA staffers will temporarily move caddy corner from their current location into OPM’s Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building while the GSA headquarters is renovated. When that overhaul is complete, both agency workforces will move into the refurbished GSA building. OPM’s current headquarters will then be sold or otherwise disposed of.

OPM Director Scott Kupor on Monday said he was excited by the prospect of the federal government’s HR and real estate agencies more easily collaborating.

“We will be very tightly packed for the next couple of years, but it's going to be great,” he said. “The buzz in that building is going to be amazing, like it's never been.”

Forst said that there is not yet an expected price for the GSA renovation, as officials are still completing preliminary plans and design estimates. He added that nearly 40% of the current GSA headquarters is uninhabitable.

GSA officials said that Congress will need to approve the renovation plans but that there is funding available to take initial steps.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who has backed the Trump administration’s efforts to sell underutilized federal buildings, said at Monday’s announcement that co-locating GSA and OPM could serve as a model governmentwide.

“I'm so grateful that we see this type of collaboration, especially when it comes to GSA and OPM. They're not telling others to do what they are unwilling to do themselves,” she said. “So they are leading the way through this collaboration, through the combination of their two spaces.”

During Trump’s first term, there was an abandoned attempt to combine GSA and OPM into one agency. While the two agencies are set to share the same building, Kupor said that there are no plans to merge the two organizations.

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Businesses line up for $166B in refunds from Trump's tariffs as CBP system goes live

Ashley Murray — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:13:46 -0400

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Customs and Border Protection tariff refund system went live Monday, marking what small business advocates call a “complex” first step for entrepreneurs to recoup $166 billion in import taxes accrued under President Donald Trump's emergency tariffs, which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in February.

Importers and brokers can now upload a detailed list of each tariff paid under Trump’s now illegal order to charge duties under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA.

Customs officials estimate 330,000 importers paid the duties. Refunds are expected within 60 to 90 days, according to CBP.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision earlier this year found Trump’s steep global tariffs exceeded his presidential powers.

Following the high court’s decision, U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Richard Eaton ordered the government to stop charging the tariffs and establish a refund system.

A handful of small businesses and Democratic state attorneys general led the legal challenge to Trump’s 2025 “Liberation Day” tariffs.

Small business owners angry, frustrated

States Newsroom documented the experiences of several small businesses across the U.S. who faced increased costs following Trump’s change in international trade policy.

Now many are experiencing a “confusing mix of relief,” Richard Trent, executive director of Main Street Alliance, told States Newsroom in an interview Monday.

Trent, whose organization advocates on behalf of small businesses said “our entrepreneurs, many of whom were angry that they had to pay tariffs in the first place, and were frustrated by the back-and-forth over the last year, opened up the portal this morning only to see that it had crashed. It just feels like the uncertainty just keeps popping up.”

Trent, who spoke to “five or six” businesses Monday morning who experienced technical issues, said the portal was up and running again by afternoon.

Customs and Border Protection did not confirm for States Newsroom whether the system had crashed, but rather provided a written statement.

“U.S. Customs and Border Protection has developed a new tool, the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE), to efficiently process refunds, pursuant to court order, for importers and brokers who paid IEEPA duties,” according to an agency spokesperson.

“CBP has issued guidance to the trade community to help them prepare to use the new CAPE tool. Importers and brokers can visit CBP’s website for resources and step-by-step guidance,” the statement continued.

Monday’s launch is the first part of a four-step process in refunding the taxes paid by American businesses of all sizes.

Trent said the “complex” process is yet another hurdle for small operations.

“This is progress, but it’s not yet justice,” Trent said in an earlier statement Monday. “Small business owners should not have to jump through hoops to get back money they never should have had to pay. We need a refund process that is simple, accessible, and fast.”

Guides for refunds

The Liberty Justice Center, the libertarian legal advocacy group that represented small business plaintiffs before the Supreme Court, has established the Tariff Equity Refund Resource for America. The platform offers online guides for how to properly submit documentation for the refunds.

“We took this fight all the way to the Supreme Court on behalf of small businesses, and we’re not stopping now,” Sara Albrecht, chair of the Liberty Justice Center, said in a statement Monday. “We are a nonprofit law firm — our only goal is to help businesses recover every dollar they are owed, not to take a percentage of it. At a time when others are looking to profit off confusion, we are making this process clear, accessible and free.”

Trump declared international trade a national emergency just over a year ago, citing a trade imbalance on imports and exports between the United States and several other countries. The president imposed a 10% blanket tariff on all global imports and steeper double-digit taxes on products from some of the top U.S. trading partners.

The president delayed and changed the rates on numerous occasions.

Following his Supreme Court loss, Trump imposed a new round of universal, temporary tariffs under a separate statute. The Liberty Justice Center is again representing small businesses in court to fight the new import taxes.

This story was originally published by States Newsroom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We’re gonna be prepared,” he said.

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

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‘Shirtless in a hot tub with Kid Rock’: Dems question RFK Jr. on HHS priorities and budget decisions

Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 16:27:14 -0400

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before Congress on Thursday that he’s not pleased with how spending cuts to programs that help lower-income Americans afford food will affect his efforts to bolster healthy eating habits.

“Am I happy about the cuts? No, I'm not happy about the cuts,” Kennedy said during a lengthy hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee, one of several congressional panels he’ll testify before in the days ahead.

Kennedy added that President Donald Trump and White House budget director Russ Vought also didn’t truly want to propose funding cuts to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, often called WIC, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

“Nobody wants to make the cuts. Russ Vought doesn't want to make the cuts. President Trump doesn't,” he said. “But we got a $39 trillion debt.”

Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore, who asked the questions, then referenced comments Kennedy made earlier in the hearing about Froot Loops, when he said it “isn't even a food. It's just poison.”

Moore noted the cereal is “a lot cheaper than good, healthy food.”

Froot Loops includes a corn flour blend, sugar, wheat flour, whole-grain oat flour, modified food starch and other ingredients.

Trump advocates reductions for HHS

The Trump administration’s budget request for the fiscal year set to begin on Oct. 1 proposes Congress increase defense spending by more than half a trillion dollars, accounting for a 43% boost, and that lawmakers cut domestic spending by 10%.

It suggested Congress reduce spending at HHS by $15.8 billion, or 12.5%, to $111.1 billion, though lawmakers largely rejected proposed spending cuts to the department during last year’s government funding process.

Vought testified earlier this week that the administration expects to ask Congress for additional defense spending for the war in Iran, though he said he couldn’t give lawmakers a ballpark estimate for how much that will add to the current request for $1.5 trillion in defense funding.

Lawmakers questioned Kennedy about dozens of other issues throughout the hearing, including how he’s spoken about vaccines since being confirmed HHS secretary, the rise in measles cases throughout the country and comments Kennedy and Trump made about the possible causes of autism.

Utah Republican Rep. Blake Moore, after sharing that his 10-year-old is on the autism spectrum, said he was “underwhelmed” by what the administration has released so far about possible causes.

He also said that his wife was hurt by claims from Trump and Kennedy that women who take Tylenol when pregnant could increase the risk their children are later diagnosed with autism.

“We don't even know if she took Tylenol during her pregnancy, but that was a hurtful moment for her,” Blake Moore said. “And I just want to encourage the administration and your team to keep at it. And I think there's more we can do here with low expectations.”

Medical experts say that decades of research show autism is the result of a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Measles death

California Democratic Rep. Linda T. Sánchez questioned Kennedy about comments he made during his Senate confirmation hearing on vaccines, arguing that he hasn’t stuck to the commitments he made during that process.

She then asked him if the measles vaccine could have prevented a boy from dying of the disease in Texas.

“It's possible, certainly,” Kennedy said.

But he repeatedly declined to answer a question from Sánchez about whether Trump approved the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision to remove a messaging campaign to encourage vaccination, even as she asked it several times.

Sánchez then displayed a poster showing a photograph of Kennedy and Kid Rock to illustrate her discontent with his work so far as HHS secretary.

“Now, one thing that I find incredible is that you suspended this pro-vaccine messaging campaign. But somehow you're spending taxpayer dollars to drink milk shirtless in a hot tub with Kid Rock,” she said. “And somehow you think that's a better public health message than informing the public about the importance of vaccines.”

Day care, Medicaid, Black maternal health

Illinois Democratic Rep. Danny K. Davis pressed Kennedy about whether he agrees with a statement Trump made earlier this month when the president said, “We can’t take care of day care. It’s not possible for us to take care of day care. Medicaid, Medicare, all of these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing, military protection.”

Kennedy responded that he was “told to make a 12% cut across our department” because the national debt, which has accumulated over decades, has reached $39 trillion.

“We're now having to tighten our belt,” Kennedy said.

Davis also questioned Kennedy on funding and initiatives to reduce Black maternal mortality, saying “the Trump administration is undermining Black maternal health from all sides.”

“The GOP slashed over a trillion dollars from Medicaid, which pays for over 40% of births in the United States. President Trump just proposed cutting maternal and child health programs by over $800 million,” he said. “DOGE canceled funds for several research projects that could save countless Black mothers, like the Morehouse School of Medicine research on improving the health of Black pregnant and postpartum women.”

Kennedy responded by arguing that he and others in the Trump administration are “doing more to advance maternal health than any other administration in history.”

“There was tremendous duplication in the departments. We had 42 different maternal health services in our department,” Kennedy said. “And we cut some of those and consolidated them. Right now, we are investing huge amounts of money in maternal health.”

RFK Jr.: “Not happy” with cuts to food aid — but still defending them.

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

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

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

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

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

The reality of the situation is more complicated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Staffing changes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strains on capacity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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