Government Executive - Management

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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ICE resists automatic activation of body cameras despite oversight concerns

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

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

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

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

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

Multiple shootings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thousands of body cameras distributed

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

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

But GAO found problems in the cameras’ deployment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Disability accommodations at Labor get extra scrutiny with annual reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.

Cassandra Garibay contributed reporting. Gabriel Sandoval contributed research.

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USDA reshapes its food assistance agency, but employee relocations remain on hold

Jory Heckman — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 07:00:00 -0400

The Agriculture Department is proceeding with a reorganization of an agency that administers food assistance for millions of Americans.

The Food and Nutrition Service, which the Trump administration recently rebranded as the “Food and Nutrition Administration,” notified employees last week that the agency has officially restructured its operations.

The biggest part of this reorganization – relocating most FNS employees across the country – remains on hold, for now.

A federal judge in San Francisco placed a temporary hold on deadlines for all “management directed reassignment” letters USDA employees have received so far. That hold is scheduled to remain in place through Oct. 13.

FNS plans to relocate most of its staff to new “hubs” that USDA has established across the country, including in Indiana, Texas, Missouri and North Carolina. A union representing the agency’s workforce says these relocations will result in further staffing losses, putting its food assistance programs at risk of disruption.

Acting FNS Administrator Shiela Corley told employees in an Oct. 6 email that the agency “officially transitioned into our new organizational structure” at the start of fiscal 2027.

According to the email, FNS operations will focus on four separate organizations – State Support & Evaluation (SSE), Nutrition Research & Regulations (NRR), Benefits & Integrity (BI), and Retailer Operations & Compliance (ROC).

“Each of these organizations are led by Deputy Administrators and form the backbone of the agency,” Corley wrote. “They are responsible for national program administration, regulatory oversight, program integrity, and operational consistency across all our nutrition assistance programs.”

FNS employees told Government Executive it’s not yet clear what impact this stage of the reorganization will have on their day-to-day work.

“It broadly talks about restructure of work areas, but no details, no timeline, nothing,” one employee said about the email staff received.

“Not sure what this means on a day-to-day level, or how this will be impacted by the larger reorg,” a second employee said. “As far as I am aware, we don’t have any additional guidance from managers, either.”

Corley wrote that the agency has “received numerous questions about how FNA programs will be organized under our new structure,” and that it will provide more information in additional biweekly updates throughout FY 2027.

An employee in USDA’s IT shop recently received a notice about an upcoming reorganization of the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO).

“I have a new immediate supervisor, but the same executive leadership. IT is not making anyone move with their re-org. But it is a dramatic change, so how the new org is going to operate seems very much up in the air,” the USDA IT employee said.

According to the USDA IT employee, a reorganization of the OCIO was also supposed to go into effect on Oct. 1, but has been pushed back to mid-December because of “processing delays at HR.”

USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A coalition of federal employee labor unions, nonprofits and local governments is suing USDA over its reorganization plans. Plaintiffs argue the relocations are a veiled attempt by USDA to further shrink its workforce. USDA already cut its workforce by about 20,000 employees largely through voluntary separation incentives last year – about a fifth of its total workforce.

FNS has shed about 30% of its workforce under the second Trump administration. About one-third of its remaining 1,200 employees currently live in the Washington, D.C. region.

The National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 226, which represents FNS employees, says more than 80% of staff who took an internal survey claim they will not relocate to keep their jobs.

FNS oversees 16 nutrition programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Women, Infants and Children, that collectively serve one-in-four Americans annually.

USDA leaders say the reorganization and relocations will improve customer service, and not result in any disruption to agency programs. A senior USDA official told the court in August that out of the 725 USDA employees who have received relocation letters so far, and that 64% of them have accepted reassignment.

Employees say that figure is inflated, and that some individuals accepted relocation notices because it is the only way they can proceed with a request for a hardship or medical exemption. Other say they've opted into relocation only to buy themselves more time to find a job that would keep them in the D.C. area.

U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria recently issued an administrative stay of USDA’s relocations while he decides whether or not to grant a preliminary injunction that would indefinitely bar USDA from carrying out relocation plans for about 2,600 employees.

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

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

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8 midterm races for federal employees to watch

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 15:51:59 -0400

The Trump administration’s efforts to downsize and remake the federal workforce could be curtailed if Democrats win back a majority in the House and/or Senate during the midterm congressional elections on Nov. 3.

Here are eight competitive congressional races for federal employees to watch, many of which feature lawmakers who are involved with the annual agency funding process or veterans’ issues.

1. Maine Senate

Susan Collins — the chair of the Appropriations Committee, which is responsible for allocating funding among most federal agencies — is up for re-election in a close race. A Republican, she frequently breaks with the president, including over funding for inspectors general and impoundments, which is when the executive branch delays or withholds congressionally approved spending.

Her Democratic opponent is Troy Jackson, the former Senate president of Maine. While in the state legislature, he sponsored legislation to provide no-interest loans to federal employees in Maine during a government shutdown. The state enacted an identical bill last year after Jackson had left the Maine Senate.

Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss up.

2. Iowa’s 1st Congressional District

Mariannette Miller-Meeks is the top Republican on the House Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Veterans Health Administration, which cares for more than 9.1 million veterans. She also has sponsored legislation, which is named after an Iowa corrections officer who died by suicide, that would promote mental health screenings and referrals for Bureau of Prisons employees.

Democrat Christina Bohannan, a law professor, is challenging Miller-Meeks for the third time. She is endorsed by the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union.

Cook Political Report rates the race as lean Democrat.

3. Ohio’s 9th Congressional District

Democrat Marcy Kaptur is a senior appropriator on the subcommittee that oversees the Army Corps of Engineers and Energy Department. In response to the Trump administration’s impoundment of agency funding, she introduced legislation that would require senior federal employees to take annual training on the budget process.

Her opponent is Derek Merrin, a former GOP Ohio state representative. While in the state legislature, he supported a public employee right-to-work bill.

Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss up.

4. Texas’ 28th Congressional District

Henry Cuellar is the top Democrat on the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Homeland Security Department, to which congressional Republicans have provided billions in additional funding for immigration enforcement.

He is a moderate Democrat. In 2024, Cuellar and his wife were charged with bribery, conspiracy and money laundering. Trump, however, later pardoned them.

Tano Tijerina, a county judge, is the GOP nominee for the seat. On his campaign website, he says that he wants to make Washington, D.C., more like Texas, which means “less bureaucracy, more action.”

Cook Political Report rates the race as lean Democrat.

5. Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District

Republican Jen Kiggans is the chairwoman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Her coastal district is home to tens of thousands of military personnel and federal employees. Last year, she introduced legislation to ensure that members of the armed services, Defense Department civilians and contractors and U.S. Coast Guard staffers would receive pay on a normal schedule despite the fall government shutdown.

Kiggans is in a rematch race against former Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, who is known for serving on the House panel that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss up.

6. Georgia Senate

Jon Ossoff is the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee panel that oversees military construction and the VA. He has criticized the administration’s proposed fiscal 2027 VA budget for directing funding increases toward private sector care.

Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., is challenging Ossoff for the position. Media outlets have reported several instances in which Collins’ staffers or family members have shared Nazi or Ku Klux Klan imagery.

Cook Political Report rates the race as likely Democrat.

7. Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District

Republican Derrick Van Orden is the chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs panel that oversees veteran education, employment and housing programs. He’s also backed efforts to block the president’s attempts to remove collective bargaining rights for Defense Department employees.

His Democratic challenger is Rebecca Cooke, a small business owner and nonprofit leader.

Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss up.

8. Texas Senate

Whoever wins this state’s Senate race will represent more than 130,000 federal employees, one of the largest headcounts in the country.

Republican Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, said that he would support cutting federal benefits programs, according to leaked audio from a private fundraiser. Paxton was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 for abuse of power but was acquitted by the state Senate.

Democrat James Talarico is a state representative endorsed by AFGE for his “100% pro-labor voting record.”

Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss up.

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What happens when the State Department loses its institutional memory?

Donald Heflin, The Conversation — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 15:05:24 -0400

Just before leaving town on Sept. 30, 2026, U.S. senators confirmed 10 new ambassadors. Among those nodded through before Congress closed for an extended midterm recess were new U.S. ambassadors for Kenya, Nicaragua, Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan.

That’s commendable – many of those countries hold geographical or strategic importance for U.S. diplomacy. But it still leaves 92 out of 196 ambassador jobs currently unfilled. In some of those cases, the White House has not sent names to Capitol Hill despite the second Trump administration being a year and a half into the job. In others, the Senate, which is controlled by the same party as the White House, hasn’t acted on the names put forward.

Regardless of the reason, as a former ambassador and an expert in the process of diplomacy, I find the current vacancies concerning. Among those embassies still without a top person in place are key partners for the U.S. – countries that Washington needs to achieve its security, economic and strategic objectives.

What makes these vacancies more worrying, in my view, is that they come amid other concerning developments in the State Department’s staffing of embassies.

Politicizing diplomacy

Chief among them are the high percentage of politically appointed ambassadors relative to positions filled by career diplomats – that is, senior foreign service officers, usually with at least 20 years of diplomatic experience.

Though many countries send politicians abroad as ambassadors, America’s diplomatic service is unique in two ways. The percentage of U.S. ambassadors who are political appointees – those who haven’t followed a career civil service path – is higher than comparative countries across the world. Second, those political appointees are often donors with little to no government experience.

The practice has existed for decades, but in recent years the number of political appointees has increased. During the Obama administration, the percentage of political appointees was around 30%. The number rose to around 40% in the first Trump administration and the subsequent Biden administration.

But in Trump’s second term, some 80% of names the White House has sent to the Senate have been political.

And many of the people Trump has put forward don’t appear to have the credentials usually associated with holding important diplomatic positions. Rather, many are friends, associates or donors to Trump, often with little overseas experience or knowledge of the country they are going to.

Lee Lipton, ambassador to a key ally in the Philippines, is owner of a restaurant in Palm Beach – Florida Benny’s on the Beach – a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and a contributor to his political campaign. The ambassador to Greece is Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Trump adviser and ex-fiancée of his son Donald Jr.

The system of political appointees has always had an element of handing ambassadorships to friends and supporters. But what has changed under Trump is the range of positions now available. In the past, ambassadors to key countries like Chile, Israel, Peru, the Philippines, Turkey and Egypt, for example, have almost always been career appointees. This has changed under the second Trump administration.

Appointing noncareer diplomats to small, faraway nations has the additional problem that the chosen individual may not actually spend much time there. The rule of thumb has long been that ambassadors should spend no more than one month every year back in the United States. But that is compromised if a noncareer diplomat with expansive business ties in the U.S. is selected.

The role of a deputy

A closely related problem is the State Department’s handling of an ambassador’s second in command, their deputy chiefs of missions – DCMs for short – under Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

During Trump’s first term in the White House, politically appointed ambassadors were often encouraged to swap out the DCMs they inherited from their predecessors. It meant going through a long hiring process, leaving those key jobs unfilled for months.

In 2025, the State Department went further, canceling the assignments of senior officers en route to take up embassy jobs and opening a new hiring process.

It formed part of a Trump purge of what many MAGA Republicans characterized as a “deep state” civil service. The reality is that DCMs fill a critically important role in helping political appointees navigate the bureaucracy and implement their policy ideas, as well as raising the occasional reality check.

With more politically appointed ambassadors – some of them with no relevant experience – having an experienced DCM can be the difference between success and failure.

Looking for other friends

When you put all of these personnel changes together, the result is the degradation of what was once seen as one of the most effective diplomatic services in the world.

What makes this potentially more worrying is where the vacancies are. For example, Belarus and Bulgaria, neighbors to Russia and Ukraine, are without U.S. ambassadors. And important countries in the fight against terrorism or in geopolitical hot spots, such as Kuwait, Qatar and Mauritania, are in the same camp.

Other countries still without ambassadors include Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest nation and the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world; key Middle East ally Egypt and nuclear power Pakistan; and nations the U.S. needs to help manage inward migration, such us Haiti and Guatemala.

The problem of absent or inexperienced ambassadors goes both ways. It means Washington may not have a capable diplomatic figurehead in these countries to contact in times of need. There are also fewer avenues for host nations to successfully convey messages back to the U.S. administration.

When faced with absent ambassadors, amateurish political appointees and deputy mission chiefs who are very junior or career appointees with short resumes, host countries may conclude that they aren’t seen as important to the U.S. and start looking elsewhere for friends.

And the U.S. has hollowed out its ambassadorial corps at a time when it is facing growing international influence by the likes of Russia, China and Iran – rival nations hoping to capitalize on a perceived diplomatic void left by Washington.

For example, as the U.S. tries to contain Beijing’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region, Fiji, Indonesia and Laos remain without U.S. ambassadors. Similarly, China’s diplomatic relations with Pakistan – a former key security partner for Washington – have grown while the ambassadorial seat in Islamabad remains empty.

And former Soviet states including Georgia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan don’t have U.S. ambassadors even as Russia President Vladimir Putin attempts to consolidate Moscow’s regional influence.

In large areas of the world, such as Africa and the Pacific region, and in important areas of policy, the lights may be on in U.S. embassies, but nobody’s home. And that is a distinct problem for national security and strategic interests.

Donald Heflin, executive director of the Edward R. Murrow Center and Senior Fellow of Diplomatic Practice, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

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

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State Department appeals board, now with limited authority, gains new members

Jory Heckman — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 17:39:40 -0400

Updated at 6:15 p.m.

The State Department is putting a new slate of individuals in charge of a panel that weighs the appeals of Foreign Service employees challenging firings and other disciplinary measures.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently appointed 14 members to the Foreign Service Grievance Board, keeping the appeals board running with a full roster. The board was half-staffed before these appointments, and the terms for all previous board members expired on Sept. 30.

The board’s former chairman warned Rubio in July that without new appointees, it would “cease to function” in fiscal 2027.

The Foreign Service Grievance Board, created under the 1980 Foreign Service Act, can reverse disciplinary measures and reinstate Foreign Service employees who face termination if the board deems there is insufficient evidence for the State Department to justify those actions.

The Trump administration, however, recently undermined some of the board’s authority to challenge employee removals and other adverse personnel actions.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, in a legal opinion released in August, determined that the board violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution because it had “unreviewable authority" over the secretary of state.

DOJ wrote in a press release that the Foreign Service Grievance Board may continue to hear grievances, but that the secretary of state “will retain final decision-making authority, as the Constitution requires.”

One of the board’s new members, Trenton Douthett, wrote on LinkedIn that the board’s work “matters because the people who serve overseas, often in difficult conditions and far from home, need confidence that disputes about their employment will be resolved fairly, impartially, and on the record.”

The American Foreign Service Association said in a statement that the Trump administration violated the Foreign Service Act by not giving the union an opportunity to approve the nominees.

“Congress required our participation, yet the agencies proceeded without it, rejecting a statutory safeguard designed to protect the board’s independence. Never in the board's history has AFSA been excluded from the process.”

More than a third of the board’s new members are members of the Ben Franklin Fellowship. According to a post on its website, the nonprofit fellowship was created in 2024 to give former Foreign Service employees an opportunity to promote “meritocracy — not DEI and wokeism — in diplomatic service.”

The New York Times recently reported on the fellowship’s influence on the upper echelons of the State Department. House Foreign Affairs Ranking Member Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., wrote in a letter in May that 25 out of 92 total Ben Franklin fellows appear to hold senior roles within the State Department.

Phillip Linderman, chairman of the Ben Franklin Fellowship, said in a statement that the new members of the Foreign Service Grievance Board "bring decades of Foreign Service, State Department, and Federal government experience, including at senior levels, as well as much needed diversity and new perspectives to the FSGB."

"Any suggestion that the new appointees will not fulfill their responsibilities to consider employee grievances in a professional manner because some are affiliated with a conservative foreign policy group is absurd," Linderman said.

Other grievance board members who are not Ben Franklin fellows have supported the rollback of DEI programs on social media. Robin Keller, the board’s new chairwoman, defended the Trump administration’s decision to shutter USAID in a comment to a LinkedIn post last year.

“Please don’t lecture those making efforts to cut the knot on seemingly insoluble problems you wring your hands about and then carry on as usual,” Keller wrote. “Birthright citizenship when abused and other illegal immigration initiatives, the lawless USAID, and so-called diversity initiatives (which don’t enhance diversity) are corrupt and are not supported by the majority. Read the election results."

In a LinkedIn post about the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling overturning affirmative action in higher education admissions, Thomas Moran, another of the board’s new members, commented that the “racial spoil system just took a well deserved hit.”

Members of the Foreign Service Grievance Board serve two-year terms and can be removed by the secretary of state only “for corruption, neglect of duty, malfeasance, or demonstrated incapacity to perform his or her functions."

Amb. Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the State Department’s first chief diversity and inclusion officer, told Government Executive that during her tenure, “there was frequent dissatisfaction” with the board’s decisions – “so much so that our office met with them to better understand how they landed where they did.”

“We learned there was a strict adherence to the law and little room for interpretation,” Abercrombie-Winstanley said. “Many of the puzzling, often upsetting decisions came down to HR or officers not documenting adequately or as instructed.”

“What we’ll see with the new Board (regardless of makeup) is whether they follow the law,” she added. “If they do, there shouldn’t be any major differences in outcomes.”

In April, the State Department recently signed a nearly $1 million contract with the company Military Hire, a subsidiary of the employment firm RedBalloon, which calls itself “America’s non-woke job board.”

Military Hire CEO Andrew Crapuchettes said in an interview that the goal is to recruit 600 to 1,000 candidates to take the Foreign Service Officer Test. The State Department sent layoff notices to nearly 1,350 employees in July 2025. About 200 of them were Foreign Service employees.

This story was updated to include a statement from the chairman of the Ben Franklin Fellowship.

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Judge extends temporary pause in USDA relocations as he considers indefinite freeze

Jory Heckman — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 14:46:34 -0400

A federal judge in San Francisco is weighing whether or not to block the Agriculture Department from carrying out its sweeping reorganization plans.

“I’m not firmly decided as to whether I'm going to grant the preliminary injunction motion or not,” U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria told both parties in a hearing Tuesday. But Chhabria is directing both parties to draft proposed language for a potential injunction by Oct. 7.

He’s also extending an administrative stay until Oct. 13, which will continue to put a temporary hold on deadlines for all “management directed reassignment” letters USDA has issued so far. The initial administrative stay was scheduled to expire on Oct. 2.

A preliminary injunction in this case would indefinitely bar USDA from carrying out relocation plans for about 2,600 employees while the court continues to review the merits of the case.

Chhabria said he anticipated that if he issues an injunction, the Trump administration may immediately try to appeal it.

“If I issue a preliminary injunction, I'm not going to stay it,” he told DOJ attorneys representing the administration. “If you want to rush to the Ninth Circuit to get a stay or whatever, you need to be ready to do that.”

Plaintiffs argued that the relocations are a veiled attempt for USDA to further shrink its workforce. USDA already cut its workforce by about 20,000 employees largely through voluntary separation incentives last year – about a fifth of its total workforce.

A coalition of federal employee labor unions, nonprofits and local governments argue that USDA is trying to circumvent guardrails on USDA reorganization established by Congress. Lawmakers included a provision in the fiscal 2026 appropriations bill for USDA that blocked officials from reorganizing or relocating offices or employees without approval from the House and Senate appropriations committees.

Chhabria spent much of Tuesday’s hearing questioning the extent of authority Congress and its appropriations committees have over USDA’s reorganization decisions.

“I think what carries the greatest weight is the actual language of the appropriations legislation, which says you can't do this,” he said. “The default is that you’re not allowed to do it.”

While Congress controls funding for federal agencies, Chhabria said the specific mechanism lawmakers included in the FY 2026 spending package was “obviously unconstitutional,” and that “Congress must have known that it was unconstitutional.”

“If Congress knows full well that the committee permission provision is unconstitutional, then is there an argument for just treating it as if it never happened? As if Congress did nothing to ratchet up the restriction on agency action?” he said.

A Congressional Research Service report in April notes that “courts generally have upheld congressional notification requirements, sometimes called ‘report and wait’ provisions” in prior spending bills, but that the requirement to obtain committee approval prior to completing a reorganization “raises legal issues concerning Congress's use of a ‘legislative veto.’”

In a written order on Tuesday, Chhabria stated that it was “significant that Congress added an approval requirement” to the FY 2026 spending bill, “after it had been on the books as a notice-and-wait provision for many years.”

“Congress did not want USDA to be spending money on these kinds of reorganization activities, unless it got permission from the committees,” he said during Tuesday’s hearing. “And so, if you take away the committee-approval provision, then what you're left with is Congress doesn't want the USDA to be engaging in spending this money on these kinds of reorganization activities, unless it goes and gets legislation passed to create an exception to the prohibition.”

Justice Department attorney Taylor Pitz told the judge that USDA “has substantive legal authority to reorganize.” Agency officials, she added, have notified lawmakers about USDA’s reorganization plans, but aren’t looking for congressional approval to proceed with those plans.

“The agency has not considered itself bound to accept congressional approval in order to proceed,” Pitz said.

She argued that the appropriations committees included language in the FY 2026 spending package that only restricted a “reprogramming, transfer of funds, or reimbursement.”

“It's really just a limitation of the department's appropriations tools to affect a reorganization. It's not, ‘you can't reorganize unless you get approval.’ It’s, ‘can't move money around a certain way,’” she said.

Pitz also said Congress didn’t include additional language to block USDA reorganization in a recently passed continuing resolution keeping the federal government funded through Dec. 11.

“It could have very easily, specifically prevented the use of funds for these activities. Congress has chosen not to do that. Congress is well aware of all of these reorganization activities, and it has not stepped in or otherwise changed the language in the appropriations going forward,” Pitz said.

Corrine Johnson, an attorney for plaintiffs, argued that USDA moving around funds to carry out its reorganization is exactly what Congress sought to block.

“They are reprogramming these funds to use them for a different purpose than which they were allocated for. So it falls under the definition of reprogramming,” Johnson said.

Chhabria questioned whether USDA has adequately prepared for attrition in cases where employees quit rather than opt for relocation — and whether that level of attrition could make it harder for USDA component agencies to carry out their work.

“Even if it's with an eye towards having a better organization — you know, a more modern, less bloated organizational structure or whatever – if, when you're making that transition, you're going to lose a bunch of key personnel who provide support to the people in Tahoe National Forest to protect against fires and things like that, that might interfere with the ability of the agency to perform its functions,” he said.

DOJ attorneys told the court in August that USDA hadn’t conducted any attrition analysis yet, but will do so, "in conjunction with hiring and facilities planning at relocation sites as it finalizes relocation plans on an agency-by-agency basis."

Pitz said all of the changes that the agency is proposing are “with the goal of how do we deliver services more effectively,” and that only about 2% of USDA’s total workforce is being asked to relocate.

“I think that itself demonstrates the agency is very carefully considering potential attrition and trying to mitigate the effects of it,” Pitz said.

Johnson said some USDA components are more disproportionately impacted by relocations than others. The Food and Nutrition Service, which USDA has now rebranded as the Food and Nutrition Administration, is looking to relocate about 700 of its approximately 1,200 employees — about 65% of its total workforce. The agency administers 16 nutrition assistance programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

“That is a huge impact on the workforce if there is any appreciable level of attrition,” Johnson said, adding that some offices are “severely understaffed,” and that “workers are already overburdened.”

Johnson said the Foreign Agriculture Service and other component agencies are also facing “similarly high levels of relocations.”

USDA agencies saw major staffing losses when they relocated hundreds of D.C.-based employees to Kansas City, Mo., under the first Trump administration — a much smaller-scale plan than what USDA is proposing under the second Trump term. The Government Accountability Office found the vast majority of employees at the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture quit rather than relocate to Kansas City in 2019.

Johnson added that “high attrition of people being relocated was likely” with USDA’s current relocation plans, “given the previous experience with the relocations to Kansas City.”

In an Aug. 28 court filing, Mary Pletcher Rice, USDA’s acting principal deputy assistant secretary for administration, stated that 725 USDA employees have received relocation letters so far, and that 64% of them have accepted reassignment.

Some USDA employees say they’ve accepted relocation notices because that is the only way they can proceed with a request for a hardship or medical exemption. Others say they have nominally agreed to relocate, but are still applying for other jobs. If that plan doesn’t work out, they may quit rather than move.

USDA officials told the court on July 24 that the department is planning to hire nearly 16,000 employees this year. But according to updated staffing plans, the department expects that a “majority” of its hiring initiatives will “result in no net gain,” and will instead “offset expected attrition.”

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$25,000 bonuses for top-performing feds? OPM makes it easier for agencies to award them

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 15:29:29 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management last week delegated to agency heads the authority to award bonuses of up to $25,000 to “highly exceptional and unusually outstanding” civil servants.

Previously, agency heads first had to seek approval from the federal government’s HR agency to distribute awards between $10,000 and $25,000.

“A performance management system that makes meaningful distinctions in performance must also deliver meaningful rewards,” OPM Director Scott Kupor wrote in the memo. “Agencies should use this authority to provide larger awards to their highest performers, ensuring that the employees who contribute most to agency missions and results receive recognition commensurate with their contributions.”

OPM announced the bonus delegation change the same day that it set a 40% cap for fiscal 2026 on the share of federal employees that can receive the top two performance ratings.

“I think you could view this as part of a package to limit the number of people who are achieving the highest ratings and getting bonuses, but sweetening the pot a little bit in terms of the size of the bonuses,” said Alan P. Balutis, who worked in the federal government for nearly three decades and is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

Likewise, Kupor posted on social media in August that, for OPM’s internal awards, the agency reduced the number of categories but tripled the honor’s monetary value “in-line with our efforts to create a high performance culture across government.”

Balutis also argued that giving agency heads the authority to award these bonuses “seems logical.”

“They're running multi-billion-dollar budgets and programs and [for them] to have the authority to give employees what is — certainly compared to the private sector — a relatively modest annual bonus makes imminently good managerial sense,” he said.

The Partnership for Public Service — a good government nonprofit that has criticized many of the Trump administration’s federal workforce reforms, especially the removal of civil service protections for around 8,000 positions in “policy-making” roles through the Schedule Policy/Career job classification — contended that “streamlining the approval authority for the awards process may be a step in the right direction, [but] it fails to address the core problem that agencies still lack the incentives, tools and culture needed to meaningfully reward high performance.”

“Building a truly high performing workforce requires holistic reform to performance management as opposed to the piecemeal tweaks we continue to see from this administration," said Jenny Mattingley, the organization’s vice president for public policy and stakeholder engagement, in a statement to Government Executive.

OPM canceled the fiscal 2025 presidential rank awards, a program to honor outstanding members of the Senior Executive Service that includes a financial award component, for no specified reason. At the start of this year, however, the agency said the awards would return for fiscal 2026.

While OPM has delegated its authority over federal worker bonuses, it has recently taken several actions to centralize power over the civil servant removal process.

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Lawmaker warns intelligence contractors' Trump ballroom donations may be scrutinized

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 15:10:08 -0400

The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat warned Monday that intelligence contractors could face congressional scrutiny over donations to President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, including whether the contributions were connected to government contracts or access to senior officials.

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., wrote to the National Defense Industrial Association asking it to remind member companies of their obligations to respond to congressional oversight. He said lawmakers were likely to pursue investigative steps concerning the donations and other dealings between contractors and the administration.

“At times, the Administration has appeared to inappropriately fuse the government contracting process with the attempted extraction of political or private favors,” Himes said in the letter to NDIA President and CEO David Norquist.

The notice signals potential scrutiny in the coming months of the financial relationships between the White House and companies that serve the nation’s vast array of spy agencies.

Nextgov/FCW has asked NDIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for comment.

The White House announced the ballroom project in July 2025, saying private contributions would cover its construction rather than congressionally appropriated funds. The White House has identified donors like Booz Allen Hamilton, Palantir Technologies and Lockheed Martin, alongside technology companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Himes said some publicly named donors belong to NDIA and have significant intelligence community contracts. His letter did not name specific companies or identify any contract awards he believes warrant examination.

He outlined questions about how donations were solicited, who participated in those discussions and whether contributions were linked to obtaining or retaining government business, presidential access or other benefits. Potential investigative steps could include requests for documents, communications and transcribed testimony.

The warning comes as Democrats appear increasingly well positioned to regain the House in November. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report said Friday that Republicans are on track to lose their majority. A Democratic takeover would give the party control of committee investigations when the new Congress convenes in January.

Under the panel’s current rules, subpoenas compelling documents or testimony require authorization from the chairman, after consultation with the ranking member, or a vote of the full committee.

The inquiry could also examine whether the donations create actual or apparent conflicts of interest or national security risks, and whether Congress should impose additional disclosure requirements or other safeguards.

He framed the issue, in part, as a concern about pressure on contractors, asking whether companies providing national security services were being pushed into arrangements that compromised the contracting process.

“Intelligence Community contractors provide valuable services to the nation, and to the extent they are being pressured in ways that corrupt the contracting process, Congress has a vital oversight interest,” Himes wrote.

The potential scrutiny extends beyond the ballroom. Himes said lawmakers may also seek information about other “unusual dealings” involving the White House, senior administration officials and NDIA members, though he did not identify additional transactions.

“I intend to ensure this matter is thoroughly investigated,” he wrote.

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Shutdown mass-layoff policy rescinded as part of settlement with unions

Jory Heckman — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 17:57:59 -0400

The Trump administration is withdrawing its authorization of widespread layoffs across the federal workforce during a government shutdown.

Federal employee unions reached a settlement with the administration on Friday, putting a pause on a lawsuit that challenged widespread layoffs carried out during a 43-day government shutdown last year.

The lawsuit will be held in abeyance until the end of the year, giving unions the ability to reopen the case if another shutdown occurs, and if the administration uses the funding lapse to terminate more employees.

The Trump administration threatened widespread layoffs as a bargaining chip to avoid a government shutdown last fall, and sent reduction in force notices to thousands of federal employees during the lapse in funding.

RIF notices that agencies issued during last year’s 43-day government shutdown have been rescinded, and employees separated by RIFs issued during that period have been reinstated to their positions.

Congress passed a continuing resolution keeping the federal government funded through Dec. 11, postponing the threat of a government shutdown until after the midterm elections.

As part of the settlement, the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget will have 30 days to notify agencies that earlier guidance making reductions in force a shutdown-exempt activity has been rescinded.

Agencies will also be instructed to remove RIF authorization from their own shutdown contingency plans.

“Within 30 days, Federal Agency Defendants will remove any language from their operative contingency plans for a lapse in appropriations that (1) provides for initiation of RIFs during a lapse in appropriations, or (2) authorizes employees to perform work necessary to administer a RIF process during a lapse in appropriations as an excepted activity, unless performing such work during a lapse in appropriations is expressly authorized by statute,” the settlement agreement states.

Under the settlement, agencies must give a 30-day notice to plaintiff unions if they plan to modify their plans to exempt initiating or administering RIFs during a future shutdown. Agencies will also have to publicly post those updated shutdown plans.

About 4,200 RIF notices were sent to employees at the departments of Commerce, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development and Treasury, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency.

A federal judge in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction blocking agencies from issuing or enforcing those RIFs. A spending package Congress passed to end the shutdown further prohibited agencies from carrying out RIFs. A subsequent funding bill kept those layoff protections in place through mid-February 2026.

Federal employee layoffs are not typical during a government shutdown. During most shutdowns, employees are either working — with or without being paid immediately — or are furloughed, meaning they are not working during the funding lapse.

OPM updated its guidance last year, exempting agency RIF procedures from the shutdown. Furloughed employees usually aren’t permitted to use their government-provided devices – including phones and computers – during a shutdown, but OPM said in its now-rescinded guidance that furloughed feds could use those devices to check for RIF notices or “additional RIF information.”

Just before the shutdown, OMB told agencies to draw up plans for RIFs in programs that wouldn’t have alternative funding sources during a lapse in appropriations, and that “are not consistent with the president’s priorities.”

In the early days of the shutdown, President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video on Truth Social portraying OMB Director Russ Vought as the Grim Reaper targeting federal employees.

Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees said in a statement the Trump administration “tried to turn a shutdown into an excuse to fire the public servants who kept this country running without a paycheck on payday.

“We fought back, we held the line, and they backed down,” Kelley said.

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Following court order, OPM replaces 'favorite EO' question for jobseekers

Erich Wagner — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 17:39:54 -0400

The controversial essay prompt asking federal job seekers about their favorite Trump administration policy or executive order is officially on the way out, in the wake of a court ruling earlier this month finding it likely violated applicants’ First Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge George O’Toole ordered the Office of Personnel Management to halt federal agencies’ use of the question, which critics described as a “loyalty test,” finding that it “directly links” jobseekers’ personal views with their potential duties as a federal employee. O’Toole issued a stay blocking agencies from including the question on federal job applications going forward but said he could not require the reconsideration of hiring actions that already occurred while the question was being distributed.

In a message last week, OPM instructed agencies to cease considering responses to the favorite executive order question for “any open vacancy,” but said they do not need to reopen previous hiring actions or repost job announcements, provided they close by Friday.

For existing job postings that remain open into next week and new job postings, agencies must now ask a new “Question 3,” one more tailored toward avoiding First Amendment concerns.

“In this role, you will be expected to professionally and efficiently implement executive direction,” the prompt states. “Provide an example where you implemented leadership direction on a strategy or policy decision that differed from your own recommendation.”

The memo also posits a new fifth essay question, tasking agencies with choosing between one and three “agency-wide priorities” and asking applicants how they would help the agency advance those initiatives.

“Agencies should populate the bracketed text with important priorities drawn from the agency’s strategic plan, annual performance plan, or other current agency priorities,” OPM wrote. “The text must be the same for all announcements within the agency.”

Although OPM’s essay questions, which the HR agency has stressed are optional, no longer explicitly query job applicants’ personal political views, Don Kettl, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and former dean of its School of Public Policy, said the questions still create friction that will hurt federal hiring.

“The administration has been arguing strongly that they are using purely objective measures to measure the merit of potential employees in the application process,” Kettl said. “But when you start introducing essays that are inherently subjective both in the way they are framed and in the way they are graded, you run counter to the other thrust of this. OPM wants to be able to say, ‘This is just another measure,’ but to have essays graded subjectively in a process that is aimed at being objective creates an inherent contradiction.”

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FDA nominee faces bipartisan scrutiny over vaccines and abortion drug

Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 06:00:00 -0400

President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration appeared to disappoint senators from both political parties Thursday with how she answered questions about medication abortion access during her confirmation hearing.

Dr. Heidi Overton also faced skepticism from committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., about her work on vaccine policy during the current administration, indicating she may not have the support needed to secure the job.

“You're a medical doctor. Of course, that resonates with me. You've seen patients. You have a deep understanding of the healthcare system and health policy, but I have concerns,” he said. “You were behind the president in the Oval Office when he signed an executive order to break up the vaccine schedule into more doses, completely ignoring the reality of families today struggling to make life affordable.”

Cassidy said that executive order was “based on zero scientific evidence” and would require parents to spend more time and more money taking their children to medical appointments to receive vaccine shots.

Overton, he said, needed to convince him and others on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that if confirmed by the full Senate, she would be “radically honest.”

“You'll also need to ensure that uninformed ideologies do not influence FDA's decisions on whether to approve individual products, even if the president is pressuring you,” Cassidy said.

In response to a question from Cassidy about the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, Overton said she believed it as well as “every vaccine on the U.S. market right now” is safe and effective.

She added the MMR vaccine remains “our best tool right now in the public health response to the measles outbreak” and that it is “97% effective in stopping transmission of the virus after two doses.”

Questions on medication abortion

In addition to several questions about vaccine and food safety, senators pressed Overton about her personal views on mifepristone, one of two prescription pharmaceuticals used in medication abortion.

Senate confirmation would place Overton as the head of the agency conducting a safety review of the drug, though she declined to say how she would handle that process.

“Mifepristone was approved by the FDA as having met its safety and efficacy standard,” she said in response to a question from Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

The senator then referenced a policy brief that Overton wrote with Matias Perttula for the America First Policy Institute that was published in February 2023.

The co-authors began by writing that “Abortion is corrosive to children, women, and society broadly because it devalues and extinguishes innocent human life.” They later added that medication abortion, which is approved for up to 10 weeks’ gestation, had become “the most common method of terminating a pregnancy” and that it “deserve(d) greater medical scrutiny.”

Overton declined to answer a question from Murray about whether an IUD counts as an abortifacient, saying that if confirmed she would be “fully briefed on all their prior decisions and make determinations according to the standards of safety and efficacy.”

Hawley presses on FDA position

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley also questioned Overton on her statements during the hearing about mifepristone, saying they didn’t match what the Trump administration was arguing in ongoing legal cases.

“I want to get to the bottom of this. I want to be sure that the FDA is not changing its position. I think this could be news to the court,” Hawley said. “So, are you saying that the FDA's position is now that the drug is safe and effective and appropriately labeled?”

Overton replied that the current Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy for mifepristone, which changed during the Biden administration to allow for it to be prescribed via telehealth appointments and shipped to patients, is under FDA review.

“That safety study is ongoing and very important. Women's health and women's safety is a critical piece of this. So there is no change in position,” she said. “The FDA does need to do that safety study to look at the internal data that has not been looked at since a REMS change was made.”

The FDA wrote in a statement to States Newsroom that “Due to active litigation, the FDA and HHS cannot comment” on the safety review.

Murkowski sees 'political pressure'

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski also didn’t ask Overton any questions about mifepristone, but said she believes there was “political pressure” on FDA officials to “revisit the approval status of certain products.”

“We're going to be in a very challenging position in a very rural state like Alaska if in fact the move to require in-person dispensing of the medication as opposed to telehealth appointments is the direction,” Murkowski said. “You have effectively taken about ... 80% of the communities in the state, and put them in a very challenging position in terms of access to providers, access to this FDA-approved drug.”

Murkowski added that she didn’t ask Overton a specific question on the issue since it appeared she would “go down this same rabbit trail and probably get the exact same very specific technical responses that you have provided the committee.”

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VA’s contracting crackdown gave some staff hours to do hundreds of reviews

Jory Heckman — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:11:15 -0400

The Veterans Affairs Department moved quickly to eliminate hundreds of contracts last year at the Department of Government Efficiency’s urging – in some cases, giving officials only a few hours to review contracts marked for elimination.

VA’s Office of Inspector General found in a report this week that the agency terminated 435 contracts last year, valued at $1.1 billion. About 86% of those cancelled contracts were for consulting services. VA OIG reviewed 2,210 contracts in total.

These contracts were “terminated for convenience,” meaning the VA determined it was in the federal government’s best interest to end them. The report also found VA contracting officers terminated another 100 contract actions, but eventually reinstated them.

The watchdog office, led by a former senior adviser to VA Secretary Doug Collins, noted VA reviewed these contracts quickly under strict deadlines, but found contracting officials generally complied with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) requirements for terminating contracts.

“Despite a challenging and fast-paced process, VA officials implemented procedures to review contracts before terminating them, which reduced the risk of terminating critical services,” the report states.

VA has the second-largest acquisition budget in the federal government. It obligated more than $78 billion in contracts in fiscal 2025.

VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven told Government Executive in a statement that “thanks to the methodical and careful review process VA put in place, these contract cancellations had no negative impact whatsoever on VA care and benefits.”

“Instead, the department is reinvesting these massive savings to make landmark improvements to VA care and benefits,” Slaven added.

At the request of officials from DOGE and the General Services Administration, VA created a list of professional services and consulting contracts that the agency should consider eliminating.

VA contracting staff were instructed to complete a questionnaire for each contract marked for termination. The OIG report notes these contracts were culled by VA officials, “not a Department of Government Efficiency artificial intelligence program." ProPublica reported last summer that a DOGE official developed an error-prone AI tool to assist VA in its review of contracts to terminate.

According to the OIG report, senior VA officials set up a process to reduce the risk of terminating critical contracts. Offices were required to justify keeping critical contracts and identify the potential impact of veterans’ healthcare and benefits if certain contracts were terminated.

Officials were required to fill out questionnaires for contacts deemed essential. The questionnaire asked officials to consider whether the contracted tasks could be performed by VA employees, how soon it would take the VA workforce to take over this work, and whether these contracts provided specialized skills that VA could not easily hire on its own.

The IG office wrote that the “speed and volume” of these contract reviews created challenges for VA staff. In some cases, VA officials had two weeks, or “only a few hours,” to review hundreds of contracts.

According to the VA OIG, some officials were given less than 11 hours to complete their review, obtain approval from deputy undersecretaries, deputy assistant secretaries or senior leaders, and submit responses to the Office of Acquisition, Logistics, and Construction (OALC).

A VA Category Management Support Office director told OIG auditors that VA senior advisers and DOGE officials directed VA employees to terminate contracts on Feb. 25, 2025, regardless of "incomplete reviews.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office last year eliminating “diversity, equity, and inclusion” activities in the federal government. By February 2025, Collins ordered a review of all VA contracts.

VA submitted two lists of terminated contracts to Congress – one in May 2025, the other in July 2025. The OIG determined that “both lists of terminated contracts were incomplete and inaccurate.”

The report determined that “officials who contributed to the information provided to Congress were unfamiliar with contracting and acquisition terminology, which may have caused the mischaracterization of the data.”

The May 2025 list reported that VA terminated 446 contract actions worth about $120 billion. A contracting official told the OIG that VA created a dashboard to track the terminated contracts, but miscalculated the contract values. A VA official told the OIG that DOGE representatives also “wanted to claim credit for any contacts that ended, including those that simply reached the end of their performance period.”

“VA has since provided Congress with updated and clearer information on the contracts that it terminated,” VA OIG wrote.

VA OIG began its audit last summer at the request of Senate VA Committee Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, a member of the committee.

Blumenthal said in a statement that the OIG report shows the cancellation of contracts at the VA was driven by DOGE and political leadership, not subject-matter experts at the VA.

“Secretary Collins owes us answers on how VA will replace lost services and how much this fiasco has cost taxpayers in arbitration, settlements, and reinstatements. Veterans and taxpayers deserve transparency and a full public accounting,” Blumenthal said.

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GSA claims it found $1.2B in suspected COVID-related contracting fraud

Christian Robles — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 16:02:38 -0400

The Trump administration claims it found more than $1.2 billion in suspected fraud and stopped $41 million more across five COVID-related contracts, according to a Wednesday press release from the General Services Administration.

GSA said although the COVID-19 national emergency and related acquisition flexibilities were cancelled in 2023, unnamed federal contractors continued to receive funding. The alleged fraud was uncovered in collaboration with the Health and Human Services Department and under the direction of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.

“The COVID emergency ended over three years ago, yet fraudsters continue to weaponize outdated emergency contracts to abuse taxpayer dollars,” GSA Administrator Edward Forst said in the release. “GSA will continue to work with the Vice President’s task force to stop improper payments, refer suspected fraud to law enforcement, and fight to recover every dollar.”

GSA estimates that about 93% of the contract funding — which would have been distributed for COVID vaccines and other pandemic-related services — has not yet been distributed to vendors, while roughly 6.78% has already been expended, according to a Fox News exclusive attached to the release. The agency has suspended payments to contractors, although the uncovered funding is not currently tied to criminal charges for contractors, the outlet reported.

“We're not after the honest contractors who did real pandemic work — we're after the leftover contracts hiding behind a crisis that no longer exists. The emergency is over. So is the free pass,” said Scott Brady, executive director of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, in the GSA press release.

The alleged COVID-related contracting fraud comes roughly a month after GSA said it found $13 billion in suspected procurement-related fraud since March 2026. At the time, an expert told Nextgov/FCW the alleged procurement-related fraud is a “trust but verify situation” and cautioned that fraud suspicions are different from adjudications.

In announcing suspected procurement-related fraud, GSA said it was reviewing COVID-19 spending, the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program spending, contractor eligibility, bid rigging, cybersecurity false claims, bribery and other contractor-integrity risks.

The administration claims it has uncovered about $260.7 billion in fraud since January 2025, including $96.4 billion at HHS and $13.9 billion at GSA, according to its fraud.gov ledger.

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IRS and Social Security will see more employees quit without advanced leave, senators warn

Jory Heckman — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 12:39:28 -0400

Senate Democrats are warning that new limits on annual leave and sick time at the IRS and the Social Security Administration will push more employees out the door, making it harder for Americans to get assistance from these agencies.

The IRS and SSA both announced in July that employees will no longer be granted advanced annual or sick leave until further notice. Federal employees are generally allowed to use “advanced” annual or sick leave for major medical emergencies, family care and bereavement of an immediate family member if they have already exhausted their annual leave or sick leave. With advanced leave, employees essentially borrow from a reserve of leave hours they will eventually accrue.

In nearly identical emails, the IRS and SSA told employees this policy change will ensure both agencies are providing a high level of customer service to the public and address several individual cases where employees took excessive amounts of advanced leave.

In a letter to Frank Bisignano, the IRS chief executive officer and Senate-confirmed commissioner of SSA, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. led colleagues in denouncing this new policy as a “cruel and unjustified plan that is likely to drive additional employees out the door, doubling down on the administration’s already disastrous efforts to push out federal employees.”

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., also signed onto the letter, shared exclusively with Government Executive.

“We are concerned that this policy will further weaken the already stressed resources of these agencies, leaving the American people with degraded access to their rightful Social Security benefits and needed IRS services,” the senators wrote. They estimate that the suspension of advanced annual and sick leave will collectively impact more than 120,000 IRS and SSA employees.

The IRS and SSA told staff that the suspension of advanced leave will remain in effect, pending efforts to reduce “significant” balances of advanced leave already taken. Both agencies wrote that in several cases, employees are unlikely to earn back the large amounts of advanced leave hours they’ve already used.

“This is debt carried against the future work of all our employees, work that has not yet occurred, and work the public expects us to deliver. This constrains our ability to invest in the people, tools, and resources our mission requires,” both agencies wrote in an email to employees.

The senators, however, say excessive use of advanced leave isn’t an issue at these agencies because “its availability is limited.” According to the Office of Personnel Management, agencies may grant a maximum of 240 hours of advanced sick leave to a federal employee, although the total number of hours permitted varies depending on the circumstances.

OPM guidance states advanced sick leave is a “flexibility” agencies can use to help new employees who haven’t accrued much leave yet, as well as more tenured employees experiencing personal hardships.

“Your actions give the appearance that this policy is less about improving service delivery, and more about punishing federal employees — and by extension, the American people,” the senators wrote.

Federal employees replenish their annual and sick leave over time. Employees who leave government service with a negative leave balance are legally obligated to refund the agency the cost of that advanced leave.

“In sum, this policy provides critical assistance to employees with significant needs and provides sufficient protections to ensure that employees’ leave does not materially affect government operations or lend itself to any attempted abuse,” the senators wrote.

An IRS spokesperson previously told Government Executive that the agency’s advanced leave restriction “aligns with the agency’s efforts to build a high-performing, highly engaged workforce operating as One IRS to deliver a world-class customer experience and aligns to our commitment to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.”

The senators, however, wrote that “it stretches the bounds of plausibility to blame advanced leave, and not widespread, chaotic job cuts,” as a drain on agency efficiency.

The IRS has shed more than a quarter of its employees since President Trump's return to office, largely through voluntary separation incentives. About 7,000 SSA employees took those same incentives last year, bringing the agency to its lowest staffing level in about 50 years.

The senators wrote that the “chaos and short-staffing resulting from these cuts” led to longer wait-times over the phone, a backlog of unprocessed tax returns, longer wait times for claims appointments and employees attempting to do more with reduced training.

“When employees inevitably leave as a result of your policies, Americans will face additional challenges receiving assistance from the SSA and IRS, delaying their access to benefits and critical tax refunds, respectively, exacerbating existing failures in service delivery with the added employer costs, borne by taxpayers, stemming from an increase in the quit rate, which includes a loss in productivity and quality, as well as needed new funds to support hiring, onboarding, and training,” they wrote.

Bisignano has touted the performance metrics at both agencies, telling lawmakers that SSA and IRS don’t need more employees to meet public expectations. Both agencies are relying on widespread employee reassignments to address acute staffing shortages across their operations.

Among their questions, the senators asked Bisignano to provide data from the past 10 years on the number of employees who have taken advanced leave, the total hours of leave taken, and the total cost of providing that leave.

They’re also asking Bisignano to explain why the IRS and SSA are “imposing a blanket suspension” of advanced leave, rather than pursue “specific and targeted policy enforcement,” and whether the agencies have conducted any analysis on the impact this policy will have on recruitment and retention.

The National Treasury Employees Union is asking a federal judge to block the IRS from enforcing its suspension of advance leave, on the grounds that Bisignano’s de facto leadership of the agency without Senate confirmation violates the Appointments Clause of the Constitution.

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IRS watchdog audits employee reassignments, as agency looks to extend some tours of duty

Jory Heckman — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 18:29:10 -0400

Updated Sept. 22 at 2:10 p.m.

An IRS watchdog is taking a closer look at the agency’s temporary reassignment of mid-career employees to frontline entry-level jobs many of them had no prior experience doing.

The audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration comes as the IRS is looking for employees currently serving in these temporary details to sign up for a third tour of duty.

The IRS in February put IT and human resources employees on 120-day details to work in taxpayer services. These employees were assigned entry-level roles answering inquiries from taxpayers and processing tax returns. The National Treasury Employees Union estimates that about 1,500 IRS employees have been placed on these details.

Most of the employees had no background in the work they were being asked to perform, but received months of training by the time IRS officials extended most of these details for another 120 days. IRS officials suggested in May that details could be extended for a third term, depending on how quickly employees cleared a “huge backlog” of amended tax returns.

The IRS cut tens of thousands of jobs last year — more than a quarter of its workforce — and fell short of its hiring goals for this year’s filing season.

IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank Bisignano said the IRS carried out a successful filing season this year, despite losing more than 25,000 employees. He told the House Ways and Means Committee in March that “I feel good about the number of employees I have right now.”

An IRS spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday that "employees detailed to Taxpayer Services functions receive training, coaching, and other resources to support this important work."

"These efforts are helping improve service for taxpayers," the spokesperson said, adding that the agency "is focused on providing the best possible experience for taxpayers and employees."

Employees placed on these involuntary details are doing jobs several pay grades below the work they were hired to perform, but continue to receive their regular paychecks. In practice, the IRS is paying them double or triple what a normal customer service representative or tax examiner would make.

TIGTA is reaching out to employees about their experience with their temporary reassignments, as part of a broader audit of the IRS workforce. In a “Strategic Staffing Survey” obtained by Government Executive, TIGTA asked impacted IRS employees if they volunteered for these details, or if they were “involuntarily assigned” to this work.

A TIGTA spokesperson said in a statement that the watchdog office is “conducting an audit on the IRS’s efforts to reshape its workforce,” and that as part of this review, TIGTA is surveying employees who have been “reassigned/detailed to other positions within the IRS.” According to the spokesperson, TIGTA expects to complete its report in May 2027.

The survey asks how qualified employees felt when they started the detail, what level of training they received for their new roles and whether they currently feel qualified for their new positions.

TIGTA also asked employees what communication — if any — they received from IRS management about the rationale for the detail, and if these details were “the most efficient way to accomplish the goal(s) or purpose(s) communicated to you.”

The watchdog office asked employees if they considered leaving the IRS for a new job, or applying for a new job within the IRS in order to get out of the detail.

Several impacted IRS employees told Government Executive that the initial details were involuntary, they have received insufficient training and support for this work, and they have no clear idea what work is available to them at the IRS if they leave these details.

According to two IRS employees currently on details, the agency is looking for volunteers to remain in taxpayer services for a third 120-day tour of duty. Employees who complete a third stint would be away from their day jobs for nearly a year. But these employees say the agency is giving them few alternatives. Both previously worked in IT roles at the agency, and have been told they cannot return to their former jobs.

“I decided to stay because there are no permanent jobs for us displaced IRS IT employees,” one detailed employee said. “They are still paying us at our primary grade, even though the position we have is at a lower grade.”

A second IRS employee confirmed that the agency “asked for volunteers to stay in the current detail for another 120 days.”

In May, IRS Chief Human Capital Officer Alex Kweskin acknowledged that some employees on temporary details were unhappy with their current arrangements, and encouraged them to apply for other roles within the agency. Employees, however, said they have applied for other 2210-classified IT positions at the IRS, only for those job announcements to be cancelled days later.

“Although we are displaced employees, we do not get any hiring preference. They just tell us to find a permanent job. Not internal support at all,” the first IRS employee said.

A third IRS employee placed on this detail said he has experienced “multiple technical issues that have affected my ability to perform my duties.” The employee said that for weeks, he’d been unable to access the Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS), a massive clearinghouse of taxpayer data at the IRS. After that issue was resolved, the employees said he was unable to log onto an internal portal needed to access amended tax returns.

“My inability to access the necessary systems has created challenges beyond my control,” he said.

The employee said he hasn’t been able to get timely feedback on the quality of his work, because the supervisor assigned to review it clocks in 30 minutes before the employee’s shift ends.

“This limited overlap makes it difficult to adequately review my cases, receive timely feedback, and understand any errors so that I can improve my performance,” the third employee said.

A fourth IRS employee on this detail said colleagues have raised concerns about “compressed training schedules and the volume of information required to be learned in a short period of time,” an expectation to “independently work taxpayer cases while still developing proficiency,” and a lack of timely feedback on errors in their work.

“Of particular concern is that multiple employees independently documented these issues in writing, requesting additional guidance, designated points of contact, feedback on errors, and greater access to technical support resources. These employees were not refusing work assignments. Rather, they were seeking the tools and support necessary to perform taxpayer work accurately and responsibly,” the fourth employee said.

Several IRS employees told Government Executive that they were involuntarily detailed to taxpayer services, but were later removed from the detail following medical emergencies. These employees remain in limbo. The IRS hasn’t assigned them to new roles, and have been repeatedly told they cannot return to their old jobs.

“I’ve essentially been isolated and placed on an island by myself,” a fifth IRS employee said. A sixth employee said they’re also waiting for a new assignment.

“According to leadership, all IT jobs are gone since the 2210 category is overmanned,” the sixth employee said.

This story was updated to include a statement from an IRS spokesperson

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A second lawsuit challenges plans to put ICE agents near polling places

Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 15:43:43 -0400

A coalition of civil rights groups and union organizations Friday sued the Trump administration to prevent the deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling locations during November’s midterm elections.

The suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is the second this month, following comments from top Trump officials citing a federal policy to allow ICE officers to enter polling locations in certain circumstances to conduct immigration enforcement.

The groups argue the policy violates the federal law that prohibits “armed men” at election sites, and also causes voter intimidation, which is barred under the Voting Rights Act.

Under federal law, “troops” or “armed men” are allowed at polling locations only if “such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” And the section of the Voting Rights Act the groups cite prohibits “intimidation,” “threats” or “coercion” against a person for voting or attempting to vote.

“The result is predictable: voters across the country — particularly Black, Latino and Asian voters, naturalized citizens, and members of mixed-status families — are afraid to vote, help others vote, and participate in civic life,” according to the suit.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin earlier this month noted that agents could conduct immigration enforcement at polling places. And before U.S. senators this week, FBI Director Kash Patel did not rule out sending FBI agents to polling locations, but said officers would “follow the law.”

The Department of Justice dismissed the idea that officers would be sent to polling locations.

“The DOJ has never said it would send federal law enforcement to polling locations,” a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement to States Newsroom. “Any suggestion otherwise is fearmongering.”

In a statement to States Newsroom, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said those “who are here legally and are not breaking other laws have nothing to fear.”

“Allegations that DHS law enforcement engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE,” the spokesperson said. “What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S. — NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity.”

The DHS spokesperson added that ICE was not planning any operations that targeted polling locations.

NAACP among groups suing

“We reject this administration’s attempt to desecrate our polling sites by converting them into militarized zones through the unlawful deployment of ICE or any other federal agent,” Kristen Clarke, the NAACP’s general counsel, said in a statement.

NAACP is one of nine groups that filed suit. The rest are Mi Familia en Accion, Asian Pacific American Advocates, the National Urban League, Minnesota 8, the Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of Teachers, the International Union of Painters and the United Food and Commercial Workers International.

“Turning the fundamental right of exercising our vote into a high-stakes encounter with the militarized strong arm of the current administration isn't protection and it isn't oversight; it's disenfranchisement, period,” Clarke said. “The NAACP calls on the court to reject this blatant attempt by federal officials to obstruct our elections through tactics pulled straight from the Jim Crow playbook.”

The nine groups are represented by the Legal Defense Fund, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, the National Immigration Law Center, Protect Democracy and the Democracy Defenders Fund.

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Labor’s disability accommodation delays under scrutiny by House lawmakers

Jory Heckman — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 17:18:28 -0400

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is pressing the Labor Department for answers about delays in processing accommodation requests for its employees with disabilities and medical conditions.

Labor Department employees told Government Executive last month that the agency is facing a backlog of hundreds of reasonable accommodation requests, and that they have waited months or longer for the agency to address their cases. Faced with this backlog, the department is looking to roll out artificial intelligence tools to help triage its workload.

Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., spearheaded a letter signed by 40 of their House colleagues, asking acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling about the backlog in RA cases.

Lawmakers say their offices are hearing from employees that the Labor Department is “failing to provide qualified employees with disabilities with timely, consistent, and effective reasonable accommodations,” and that it may not be fulfilling its legal obligations under the 1973 Rehabilitation Act.

“Delays in providing accommodations may prevent employees from fully performing their official duties, reduce productivity, negatively affect employee morale and retention, and increase the Department's exposure to Equal Employment Opportunity complaints, grievances, and litigation,” they wrote.

Agencies are required to provide RAs to workers with disabilities, unless doing so would result in “undue hardship.”

Employees have complained about similar delays at several other federal agencies. Those complaints have led to multiple lawsuits. But Labor Department employees say the delays they're experiencing are unusual for an agency charged with protecting the workplace rights of workers with disabilities.

“The Department of Labor serves as the federal government's principal agency responsible for protecting workers' rights and enforcing federal workplace laws. Accordingly, the Department should serve as a model employer by ensuring its own employees receive prompt, transparent, individualized, and legally compliant consideration of reasonable accommodation requests,” the lawmakers wrote.

Lawmakers wrote that interim accommodations “are infrequently considered while requests remain pending,” contrary to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance, and that staffing shortages have contributed to significant processing delays and growing backlogs.

Several employees told Government Executive that they were hired for fully remote positions, or only had to report to the office twice per two-week pay period, but were instructed to return to the office full-time under the Trump administration. President Donald Trump’s first-day memo required most federal employees to work onsite — but exempted employees with disabilities.

The department saw a surge in reasonable accommodation requests following Trump's return-to-office mandate, but its human resources workforce has been decimated by voluntary separation incentives, and has been unable to keep up.

“If accurate, these staffing challenges raise serious questions regarding the Department's ability to satisfy its obligations under the Rehabilitation Act and provide employees with equal employment opportunity,” the lawmakers wrote.

One Labor Department employee told Government Executive that his RA request to work from home about half of the time was approved in February, but that he is still waiting for the agency to order an ergonomic chair and standing desk that was also part of his accommodation request.

Lawmakers say they’ve also heard reports of “prolonged delays” in employees receiving ergonomic equipment, assistive technology, software, and other accommodations necessary to do their jobs.

“In many instances, employees report receiving little or no communication regarding the status of their requests, leaving them uncertain whether required,” they wrote.

Lawmakers say they are “particularly concerned” by delays reported by employees seeking telework as a reasonable accommodation. EEOC and the Office of Personnel Management told agencies in February that they should not take a “blanket approach” to rescinding or denying telework accommodations.

OPM Director Scott Kupor estimated in a January blog post that about 10% of federal employees have received exemptions from Trump’s return-to-office orders.

“Returning to in-person work and upholding disability rights are not mutually exclusive,” Kupor said in a Feb. 11 press release.

Among their questions, lawmakers are asking Sonderling to provide current processing times for RA requests, how many requests are still pending, and what “oversight mechanisms exist to ensure consistent application of reasonable accommodation policies across all Department agencies and offices.” Lawmakers are seeking a response no later than Oct. 16.

Meanwhile, thousands of Labor Department employees’ sensitive personal and medical information was improperly shared to someone’s personal email account, according to an internal memo about the incident.

The Labor Department recently notified more than 3,000 employees about an “internal incident” on July 22, in which an email containing a spreadsheet of personally identifiable information related to employees' reasonable accommodations requests was sent to an “individual's personal email address outside of the DOL domain.”

Following an initial investigation, the department “discovered that more than one email" containing PII or protected health information (PHI) was sent to the same personal email address outside of the DOL domain.

According to the Labor Department, the individual “had authorized access to the information in the performance of their DOL duties,” but did not have the authority to send the information to a personal email address.

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The FDA requires follow-up studies for drugs and devices. Years later, many still aren’t done

David Hilzenrath, KFF Health News — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 10:23:11 -0400

When the FDA was deciding whether to approve the drug Tavneos several years ago to treat a set of rare autoimmune diseases, agency experts argued that would be a mistake, according to FDA records.

One problem cited: The manufacturer had provided only “limited safety data.”

As it often does, the FDA in 2021 approved the drug with a proviso: It required the manufacturer to conduct an additional years-long safety study once the drug was on the market.

Today, like many similar “postmarket” studies mandated by the FDA, that additional study is delayed, according to a federal database. As of last fall, only 21 of the planned 300 patients had been enrolled, the FDA said in an April letter and regulatory posting.

Meanwhile, the FDA has identified dozens of cases of liver damage “possibly” or “probably causally associated” with the drug. That was one of the potential side effects the postmarket study was meant to evaluate.

Tavneos illustrates the perils of the FDA’s approach to many drugs and medical devices — and the frequent lapses in follow-through.

A KFF Health News analysis of Food and Drug Administration data found hundreds of postmarket studies listed as delayed. In some cases, the work was delayed by more than a decade or the manufacturer was still developing a plan for the study.

As a result of delays, patients, doctors, and others could be left in a fog about the risks and benefits of the drugs or devices, even as they stake their money, their health, or their lives on the products.

Postmarket study requirements “have often proven toothless,” said cardiologist Sanket Dhruva, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco who has published related research.

The FDA’s reliance on postmarket studies reflects a balancing act.

Making new treatments available faster can save or improve lives, especially when patients with grim prognoses and no good options have little to lose. The full risks and benefits may be revealed only over the long term, and when therapies are used by far more people than even large clinical trials enroll.

But relying on post-approval studies to resolve questions risks exposing patients to products that do more harm than good. Whoever is paying the bills — patients, insurance companies, employers, or government health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid — can end up wasting money and rewarding manufacturers for useless or risky products.

“Doctors rely on this evidence, patients rely on this evidence, and if that evidence is not there, it’s going to lead to a lot of uncertainty,” Dhruva said.

Trump administration policy changes designed to hasten drugs through FDA review could leave more riding on postmarket studies, medical researchers say.

For example, in February, FDA leaders announced that “the default requirement” for agency approvals will be one clinical trial instead of two.

Reducing pre-approval testing “will inevitably put a lot of pressure on the post-approval system,” said Aaron Kesselheim, a professor at Harvard Medical School who has analyzed postmarket studies.

FDA officials said the new policy would “substantially reduce costs” for manufacturers and “speed drugs to market.” Writing in The New England Journal of Medicine, they denied the change would compromise safety or efficacy, saying that “erroneous conclusions may be reached even with two, three, or four studies.”

In response to questions for this article, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA, said postmarket studies can experience delays for legitimate reasons. “Assessing the significance of any delay requires a case-specific review,” said the spokesperson, Emily Hilliard.

The fact that a study is delayed “should not be treated as evidence that a product has an unresolved safety or effectiveness issue,” Hilliard said.

Amgen, the company that makes Tavneos, is still working on the postmarket research the FDA mandated, company spokesperson Alison Chartan said, adding, “We remain committed to completing this important study.”

Behind Schedule

An FDA database downloaded by KFF Health News in August tracks the progress of postmarket studies that makers of drugs or biologics — such as vaccines and gene therapies — were required to perform or promised to perform.

The database showed almost 600 were running behind schedule.

Of those, more than 250 originally had final reports due before July 31, 2026 — the date that, according to an FDA webpage, the database last had been updated.

About a third of ongoing studies were listed as delayed.

In some cases, the FDA has granted extensions. In others, it has denied them. And in rare instances, the products were discontinued before the studies ran their course.

Postmarket studies can involve clinical trials or other analyses of patient data. They can look at safety or efficacy. A product can be the subject of more than one postmarket study.

The nearly 600 delayed studies involved almost 350 products, KFF Health News found.

The FDA has defined delayed as behind the original schedule. That can mean off track or overdue.

As of August, other FDA databases tracking medical devices listed dozens of postmarket studies as behind schedule.

Products included:

The CustomFlex Artificial Iris, a prosthesis implanted in the eye in place of damaged, defective, or congenitally missing irises. The protocol for a study in children was accepted in 2019, the database said. The study was meant to follow patients for five years. According to an FDA page downloaded in August, zero patients were enrolled.

Barbara Fant of Clinical Research Consultants, to whom the FDA’s 2018 letter approving the product was addressed, said the rarity of an eye disease called aniridia poses challenges for post-approval studies. The German manufacturer, the U.S. distributor, and Clinical Research Consultants are working with the FDA to identify alternative ways to fulfill the postmarket requirements, Fant said.

“Confirming the long-term safety of the device remains a top priority for both the study team and FDA,” Fant said.

Paxlovid, a treatment for covid. A study to assess its safety in pregnant women was originally to be completed by the end of 2024, the FDA database said. “The trial completion and final report milestones were missed,” the database said.

Pfizer, the manufacturer, is working with the FDA and remains committed to “submitting results as soon as practicable,” Pfizer spokesperson Jerica Pitts said.

The Scandinavian Total Ankle Replacement system. The device and the original protocol for the clinical trial were approved in 2009. The study was meant to include a minimum of 500 subjects, the database said, but the actual number enrolled was 142. Almost half those patients had one or more adverse events, with dozens of “reoperations,” “revisions,” or “removals,” the database said.

Rachel Colloff and Cristina Pasquino — spokespeople for Enovis, which markets STAR Ankle — did not respond to multiple inquiries. Jenny Braga, a spokesperson for Stryker, which previously sold the product, did not answer questions about the postmarket study.

Oxaydo (originally named Oxecta), a form of the potentially addictive opioid painkiller oxycodone touted as designed to deter abuse. When the FDA approved it in 2011, it required the manufacturer, part of Pfizer, to conduct a postmarket study to assess whether it reduces “misuse and abuse, and their consequences: overdose, death and addiction.” The final report was originally scheduled to be submitted in 2016.

The FDA database listing the study as delayed said the agency “issued a failure to respond letter” in 2022.

Today the issue may be all but moot.

Control of the product passed from company to company over the years until 2023, when Acura Pharmaceuticals said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that patents on Oxaydo would begin expiring that year and it didn’t intend to continue marketing the drug.

According to another FDA database, Oxaydo has been discontinued.

The FDA has enforcement powers and uses them “where appropriate,” HHS’ Hilliard said. She did not provide requested details, and she did not answer questions about the studies listed above.

Delay Can Pay

For manufacturers, delay can pay, Harvard’s Kesselheim said. While postmarket studies are ongoing, companies can continue to sell the products.

“Medicare and Medicaid spent more than $18 billion from 2018 to 2021 for accelerated approval drugs with incomplete confirmatory trials past their original planned completion dates,” the HHS Office of Inspector General estimated in 2022.

The FDA can demand postmarket studies for a variety of reasons, including to address concerns that arise after a product has been approved. Some look at uses not covered by the original approval, and some are meant to shed light on serious risks that are already known.

In April, when it approved Foundayo, a weight loss drug made by Eli Lilly, the FDA required the company to conduct additional research to assess a variety of concerns, including “retained gastric contents,” “major adverse cardiovascular events,” and “drug-induced liver injury,” as well as effects of exposure during pregnancy, such as “major congenital malformations,” “spontaneous abortions,” and “stillbirths.”

The FDA said it approved the drug under the new Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher program, intended for products that “address critical national health priorities.” The program strives for an “ultra-fast” review, the FDA has said — one to two months, instead of six months or more with other expedited pathways.

“Postmarketing requirements and enhanced safety monitoring are a routine part of the FDA’s approach to evaluating newly approved medicines,” Eli Lilly spokesperson Kristiane Silva Bello said, “including ongoing monitoring in areas identified during clinical development.”

‘False Hope’

The FDA waded into a world of uncertainty in 2016 when it granted accelerated approval to a drug for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a degenerative disease that primarily affects boys, disabling them at a young age and ultimately killing them.

Agency scientists had found that the drug, Exondys 51, was unproven and argued against greenlighting it.

Ellis Unger, then a senior drug evaluation official at the FDA, wrote in an internal memo that “thousands of patients and their families would be given false hope in exchange for hardship and risk.”

The manufacturer, Sarepta Therapeutics, conceded the uncertainty. “A clinical benefit of EXONDYS 51 has not been established,” it said when the drug, also known by the generic name eteplirsen, was approved.

The drug, the first FDA-approved treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, targeted a subset of patients with the disease.

The FDA required Sarepta to conduct further studies and warned that it could withdraw approval if postmarket trials failed to verify a clinical benefit or were “not conducted with due diligence.”

Unger issued a warning of his own: “FDA has not succeeded in withdrawing the marketing of a single drug for lack of verification of clinical benefit following accelerated approval. The reality is that if eteplirsen is given accelerated approval, it is highly likely to remain on the market indefinitely, irrespective of whether or not efficacy is verified.”

Sarepta was originally required to submit a final report on a postmarket study by a May 2021 deadline, according to an FDA database and a 2016 FDA letter to the company.

Almost a decade after the drug was approved, and more than five years after that deadline, the study was listed in an FDA database as delayed.

“The final report milestone was missed, because the sponsor requested milestone extensions due to study delays,” the database said.

Meanwhile, in 2022 the website Pharmaceutical Technology ranked Exondys 51 as the second-most expensive drug in the U.S., at an annual cost of $750,000 to $1.5 million.

Last year, the drug generated $538 million in sales for Sarepta, according to a company presentation to investors.

Sarepta found it difficult to recruit patients for the postmarket clinical trial, company spokesperson Tracy Sorrentino said. The target population is small, patients were hesitant to enroll, and Sarepta was competing with other clinical trials for participants, Sorrentino said.

The study has been fully enrolled since 2023, Sorrentino said, and the company plans to provide an initial look at the data late this year.

‘Manipulated’

Amgen has cited similar challenges, even as Tavneos generated $459 million in global sales last year.

When an approved treatment is available, patients may be reluctant to enroll in a study in which they could be given a placebo, Amgen’s Chartan said.

The clinical trial was originally supposed to be done by the end of 2030. As of July 24, just 49 patients had been enrolled, Chartan said.

The FDA has said the study was to include 300 patients, and each patient enrolled must be followed for five years, said Hilliard, the HHS spokesperson.

Tavneos was approved to treat severe cases of a group of diseases — known by the shorthand ANCA-associated vasculitis — in which, as the Cleveland Clinic explains, the immune system inflicts potentially fatal damage on blood vessels and organs.

“As of January 2026, estimated real-world exposure” to Tavneos “exceeds 25,000 patient-years globally, consisting of over 6,500 in the United States and 19,000 abroad,” Amgen has said. (For context, one patient taking a drug for five years would amount to five “patient-years.”)

A clinical trial sponsored by ChemoCentryx to secure approval of Tavneos failed to prove it was effective, the FDA now alleges. Instead of disclosing that outcome to the FDA, company personnel “manipulated” the results, the FDA alleged in an April letter to Amgen.

Amgen, the parent company of ChemoCentryx, has denied the results were manipulated and has said the data “remain valid.”

Nonetheless, the European Union recently revoked its approval of Tavneos.

The FDA is trying to pull Tavneos from the market, and Amgen is fighting that effort.

The company has a lot riding on the outcome. Tavneos can cost more than $220,000 per year, according to the drug discount website GoodRx, and when Amgen acquired ChemoCentryx in 2022 for $3.7 billion, Tavneos was the only drug ChemoCentryx had brought to market.

In a June letter to the FDA, Amgen said the benefits of Tavneos outweigh the risks.

The FDA disagrees.

The FDA “can no longer conclude that there is, or has ever been, a valid demonstration of substantial evidence of effectiveness for TAVNEOS,” the agency wrote.

Citing 76 cases of DILI — drug-induced liver injury — the agency said it was “increasingly concerned about the safety profile of TAVNEOS.” Without proof of effectiveness, at least for its approved use, “the drug’s benefits cannot outweigh its known risks,” the FDA wrote.

Data reporter Maia Rosenfeld contributed to this report.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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VA disputes arbitration fees split with union it’s fighting to no longer recognize

Jory Heckman — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 17:09:37 -0400

The Veterans Affairs Department is disputing what it owes to a third-party arbitrator who recently settled a dispute between the VA and a union it is fighting to no longer recognize.

Arbitrator James M. Cooney determined in April that the VA violated its 2023 master agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees when it refused to grant official time to representatives AFGE Local 0025, which is based in Hagerstown, Md.

Cooney ordered the VA to “cease and desist from refusing to recognize the Union.” He also ordered the agency to provide back pay with interest, and restore leave time to union representatives who were improperly denied official time.

Official time is a practice in which union officials at federal agencies may be compensated for representational work, including contract negotiations and representing employees in grievance proceedings and internal investigations.

VA terminated most of its union contracts on Aug. 6, 2025. But a federal judge in Rhode Island granted a preliminary injunction on March 13, 2026 that required the VA to reinstate its contract with AFGE. The agency has attempted to re-terminate its contract with AFGE following the preliminary injunction, but has been rejected each time by U.S. District Court Judge Melissa DuBose.

This legal battle traces back to President Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order that banned collective bargaining at the VA and many other federal agencies under the auspices of national security.

VA officials, however, are contesting what it owes the arbitrator in this case, arguing that it isn’t obligated to pay for services rendered when the agency did not recognize AFGE.

In emails obtained by Government Executive, Christopher Richins, an attorney with the VA’s Office of General, told the arbitrator that “the Agency may pay only for services rendered before August 6, 2025, and after the effective date of the preliminary injunction,” adding that the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island “did not order any retroactive relief” to the union when it granted the injunction.

Richins wrote that the VA will pay a “portion” of what the arbitrator has charged the agency, but “is unable to pay” for services billed in August 2025, September 2025 and January 2026.

Cooney told Richins in an email last month that “I still do not understand the Agency's logic or rationale for avoiding its obligations, especially given the Agency's active participation in the case.”

“It was my expectation that if the Agency actively participated in the arbitration process (which it ultimately did), it would honor an arbitrator's invoice for work performed, rather than designate that such services be rendered on a pro bono basis,” Cooney wrote in a subsequent email.

Cooney wrote in an email this Thursday that “the VA has initiated the payment process.” A VA spokesperson declined to comment.

AFGE Local 0025 President Darren Petite wrote in a grievance filed in August that VA should “bear equally the expenses of the negotiated arbitration process,” and that the agency “should not be permitted to accept and utilize the benefits of the arbitration process while disclaiming the corresponding financial obligations.”

Petite wrote that the union “does not presently assert retaliatory motive” to the VA for disputing payment to an arbitrator who ruled in favor of the union, but that “the timing and circumstances surrounding the Agency's refusal to honor its contractual payment obligation reasonably raise that concern.”

“Allowing a party to withhold contractually required compensation from a neutral arbitrator following an adverse decision would create, at minimum, the appearance that an arbitrator's compensation may depend upon the outcome of the case,” he wrote.

Petite added that this situation “may discourage neutral arbitrators from accepting future cases” involving the VA.

Timothy Bailey, the acting assistant director of VA’s Decision Review Operations Center, denied the union’s grievance in a Sept. 1 memo.

Language in AFGE’s master agreement with VA states that arbitrator fees and expenses are generally split between both parties. However, Bailey wrote that provision "does not independently authorize the expenditure of appropriated funds for arbitration services performed during a period in which the Agency was prohibited from recognizing or administering the collective bargaining agreement.”

“With respect to the arbitrator’s fees, the Agency is unable to pay any portion of the fees attributable to services performed between August 6, 2025, when the Agency ceased recognition of the Union and the collective bargaining agreement was no longer being administered, and March 27, 2026, when the preliminary injunction became effective,” Bailey wrote.

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