Government Executive - Oversight

Despite taxing year, IRS watchdog reports mostly smooth filing season

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:46:50 -0400

Despite having to make more than 100 changes to the tax code as a result of the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, employing about a quarter fewer employees and experiencing leadership turnover, an independent IRS watchdog reported that the tax agency conducted a largely successful filing season in 2026. But the Taxpayer Advocate Service also warned that staff cuts made it harder for taxpayers who needed assistance to receive it.

“In the end, the IRS performed better than expected in most respects. The vast majority of taxpayers filed their returns successfully and received their refunds without significant delay,” National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins wrote in a Wednesday report to Congress. “IRS leadership and its workforce deserve substantial credit for that accomplishment, particularly given the extraordinary operational pressures they overcame.”

TAS reported that the IRS processed almost 99% of individual tax returns by the end of filing season. The office attributed this to stable leadership in the division responsible for tax filing as well as a “significant majority” of returns being automatedly processed through electronic submission and direct deposit.

Still, the watchdog criticized phone wait lines, the level of provided in-person assistance and the filing experience for many taxpayers who rely on paper checks.

“With fewer employees and even fewer experienced employees, personal service was harder to come by,” Collins wrote. “That translated to longer waits for assistance, fewer experienced employees available to work on complex account issues, delayed responses to correspondence and, as a result, longer case resolution times.”

In total, IRS answered 21% of calls in 2026 with an average wait time of 14 minutes compared with 25% the prior year when taxpayers waited an average of eight minutes.

The TAS noted this was somewhat by design, as the IRS prioritized assigning employees to work on responding to paper correspondence instead of answering phones because staffers often end up not performing work while waiting for a taxpayer to call.

But the watchdog flagged that the phone line for taxpayers when they are unable to pay their liability, for example, only answered 31% of the time and after an average wait of 45 minutes. Likewise, the line taxpayers need to call to prove their identities when their returns are suspected of identity theft had an answer rate of 19% with a 20-minute average wait.

The TAS also reported that the number of fully staffed Taxpayer Assistance Centers decreased to 42 from 102 in 2025 and that the Trump administration’s pivot away from paper checks contributed to delays of six weeks or more for taxpayers who requested non-electronic refunds.

“A modernized IRS can and should improve efficiency and service, but transformation should not come at the expense of accessibility, fairness or human assistance,” Collins wrote.

The National Treasury Employees Union said the TAS report shows the IRS workforce deserves praise for managing “to do more with less” but also bemoaned the reduced service availability.

“No taxpayer should be left out in the cold for needing help paying their fair share,” said NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald in a statement. “A smaller, less effective IRS undercuts the whole tax system and deprives our government of much-needed revenue.”

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Education Department layoffs hindered congressionally mandated activities, inspector general reports

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:33:55 -0400

Layoffs at the Education Department during the first two months of President Donald Trump’s second term resulted in the agency being unable to perform legally required activities, according to a report published on Monday by the department’s inspector general.

The watchdog found that many Education suboffices were left without any staffers due to reductions in force and various separation incentives, which hindered the department’s ability to perform dozens of statutory and oversight functions between Jan. 20, 2025, and March 31, 2025.

Some of the impacted activities included:

Overseeing states, nonprofits, lending institutions and servicers that are involved in federal financial aid for postsecondary students.
Managing grants to states for helping youth learn English.
Administering a congressionally mandated program that helps educational institutions acquire excess federal property.
Advising department employees on ethics matters.

The IG said that the department did not provide all requested information or allow “unfettered” access to agency staff, which restricted the investigators’ review. Education’s deputy general counsel, Philip Rosenfelt, said in a letter attached to the report that officials’ compliance was limited by court orders.

“Proceding beyond what had been shared — including information contained in, or outside of, the litigation administrative records — risked prejudicing or interfering with the department’s litigation posture and, critically, and potentially contravening the preliminary injunctions or other orders then in effect,” he wrote.

Education initiated the RIF on March 11, 2025, but the action was blocked by a federal judge in May 2025. The Supreme Court in July 2025, however, ruled that the separations could proceed.

Investigators did not consider the court orders to be a valid reason for the department’s noncompliance, arguing that the IG has “a longstanding history of reviewing and protecting sensitive department information, including materials related to ongoing litigation” and that officials never adequately explained why providing access to documents and staff would violate the preliminary injunction.

In addition, Rosenfelt requested in the letter that investigators include language that “some or all” of the department functions the IG identified as not having any assigned staffers were conducted by other offices or agencies. The IG declined.

“We cannot acknowledge, as requested by the department, that some or all of the responsibilities referenced in the report were fulfilled by the department, other agencies or through other means, as no corroborating evidence has been provided to support the department’s assertion that it has continued to discharge those responsibilities since the RIF,” investigators wrote.

In total, the IG reported that between Jan. 20, 2025, and March 31, 2025, the department, which the Trump administration is seeking to eliminate, shed 40% of its workforce, with around 1,200 due to layoffs and more than 350 from voluntary separations like the deferred resignation program.

Federal workforce data from the Office of Personnel Management shows that Education went from roughly 4,200 employees in 2024 to nearly 2,300 staffers now.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon testified before Congress in April that some of the department’s staff cuts went too far and noted that laid off Office of Civil Rights staffers were asked to return due to case backlogs.

The IG also found that Education, during the report period, terminated 129 contracts worth a total value of $1.3 billion, some of which were for legally required educational studies. And the department canceled 90 grants with total obligations of nearly $504 million. Of those grants, officials identified 153 awards for termination under a program for partnerships to train school-based mental health service providers.

Rachel Gittleman — the president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education employees — contended the report “gives the public the fullest picture to date of the devastation McMahon has wrought.”

"This confirms what we've been saying all along: The Trump Administration has been systematically destroying the Education Department,” Gittleman said in a statement.

As part of the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle Education, the department has signed interagency agreements with several other agencies for them to take on various responsibilities, including most recently transferring special education programs to the Health and Human Services Department and civil rights enforcement to the Justice Department.

Education Inspector General

Education’s IG office has experienced significant leadership turnover since the start of Trump’s second term.

The president removed IG Sandra Bruce in January 2025 as part of a mass firing of the watchdogs. Then, in July 2025, he replaced acting IG René Rocque, who is also the office’s deputy, after she notified Congress that investigators had “experienced unreasonable denials and repeated delays” from the department during an investigation into the administration’s workforce reductions.

The replacement’s — Heidi Semann, who comes from the Federal Reserve OIG — tenure as acting ended at the end of 2025 due to time limits on how long officials can serve in an acting capacity. She is, however, Trump’s nominee to serve as Education IG.

Currently, Mark Priebe is the acting Education IG. He previously held a senior position in the office and appears to have shared social media posts supporting the president.

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Congressional Dems demand info on revised workforce survey

Erich Wagner — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:29:30 -0400

A group of 23 Democrats in both the House and Senate called on the Trump administration to detail its plans to administer the 2026 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, nearly a year after officials flouted federal law in cancelling it because of needed “transformation.”

Each year, the Office of Personnel Management is required by law to conduct a survey of federal employees’ workplace engagement and morale, with 16 of its questions mandated by federal regulations.

But last year, OPM Director Scott Kupor canceled the survey, citing the need to remove questions to conform with the president’s anti-diversity executive orders and to "refocus” it on performance and efficiency. OPM also scrubbed data and analysis stemming from a series of diversity-related questions added to the survey during the Biden administration and removed most demographic data about federal workers from its workforce data suite FedScope.

In a letter to Kupor last week, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., led congressional Democrats in demanding information on when and how OPM intends to relaunch the questionnaire, which has been a key tool for agencies to improve operations and for observers to conduct oversight for decades.

“In 2025, the federal workforce experienced dramatic, and, in many cases, illegal changes,” the lawmakers wrote. “According to OPM’s own data, approximately 317,000 employees left the federal government in 2025. The Pew Research Center noted that the federal workforce decreased by 10.3% in 2025. While the FEVS is critical in any year to fulfill statutory requirements and help improve the civil service, it is deeply concerning that in a year of significant change that this survey was cancelled.”

In an interview with Federal News Network last month, Kupor said his agency is reshaping the survey to focus on “micro level” questions related to employee expectations and efficiency, and has previously touted his agency’s use of quarterly “pulse surveys” to fill in the gaps left by the cancelled FEVS. But unlike FEVS, Kupor’s reporting of the results of those surveys omits the text of the questions asked and the underlying data.

Though FEVS originally was sent to just a sample of employees across the federal government, lagging response rates led OPM to switch to a census model, which solicited all eligible workers’ response, in 2018.

The lawmakers’ letter comes as FEVS’ traditional spring administration window closes—OPM previously postponed FEVS in the fall of 2020 due to disruption caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. They asked for the list of questions planned for the 2026 survey, the timeline for its deployment, as well as any changes to how it solicits responses.

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FEMA, OMB noms grilled on alleged political sway in government assistance

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:08:29 -0400

In a hearing on Wednesday that featured nominees to lead a wide range of federal agencies, Senate Democrats on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee focused their questioning on differences in politics possibly preventing individuals and groups from receiving government services.

Cameron Hamilton, the nominee to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was asked repeatedly about a March analysis from E&E News that found President Donald Trump approved 23% of disaster funding requests from Democratic-led states compared with 89% for Republican-run states.

“This is unacceptable,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H. “The idea that Americans who need help in the wake of a tornado, or a flood or a hurricane should be treated differently based upon politics is shameful. It is un-American.”

Hamilton agreed that partisanship should not play a role in approving disaster assistance and expressed doubt that the president would reject aid to a state solely because it leans Democrat.

The nominee was also pressed about whether FEMA should increase staffing levels after the Trump administration pushed out thousands of employees.

“They are an exceptional group of public servants, but there needs to be enough of them on the ground,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “And you will lose more of them unless you are adequately staffed.”

Hamilton didn’t directly answer the question, but he did back Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s recent decision to bring back several hundred workers who had been let go.

Last year, Trump fired Hamilton from serving as the acting chief of FEMA after he testified against the elimination of the agency, which contravened the president’s position at the time. In May, however, an administration-backed review panel recommended preserving FEMA but urged state and local governments to take on a larger share of disaster response and recovery.

Hamilton also told the senators that he wants to do a “significant IT overhaul” of the agency and, if confirmed, would release a 30-day report on areas where FEMA can reform.

Trump’s Office of Management and Budget deputy director nominee, Hal Duncan, was also asked about political influence on funding decisions. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., said that a proposed rule from the agency to overhaul the federal grantmaking process, including by requiring political appointees to approve awards to ensure they advance the president’s priorities, was creating a “climate of fear.”

She questioned if a university would lose federal research funding if it allowed a peaceful protest against the war in Iran. Duncan didn’t directly answer the question but said “this administration is committed to gold standard science.”

Duncan currently serves as a senior official at OMB.

Ranking member Gary Peters, D-Mich., said during the hearing that OMB is not cooperating with at least 14 audits from the Government Accountability Office, an independent and nonpartisan watchdog agency in the legislative branch. Likewise, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said that “OMB has been very slow to respond to some of [GAO’s] investigations.”

In response, Duncan said that he would review the audits in question.

“At one point, we had 50 open inquiries from GAO mid-last year,” he said. “We try to respond to GAO inquiries in a responsible time, while still maintaining our ability to carry out our duties in support of the administration.”

OMB Director Russell Vought has previously characterized GAO as “typically wrong and very partisan.” On several occasions, the agency has determined that the administration violated rules around impoundments, which is when the executive branch delays or withholds congressional approved spending.

In addition, Peters criticized the hearing’s “overcrowded lineup” with 11 nominees testifying — five in the first half and the other six in the second half. The ranking member also said that several of the nominees haven’t completed Office of Government Ethics financial disclosures or FBI background checks.

“It certainly looks like this committee's Republican majority is simply rubber stamping the president,” he said.

Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., responded that the committee would not vote on a nominee until all ethics reports and background investigations are complete.

Charles Baldis – the nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which protects federal whistleblowers from retaliation – was not asked a specific question throughout the nearly 90-minute hearing.

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Who watches the watchdogs? GAO finds flaws in inspector general oversight system

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 16:47:02 -0400

The Government Accountability Office on Monday released a report finding that the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency frequently fell short of its own process requirements when investigating misconduct allegations against agency watchdogs.

The central IG group houses the Integrity Committee, which reviews ethics complaints against IGs and other senior OIG personnel. The panel is composed of select IGs as well as representatives from the Office of Government Ethics and FBI. Between 2020 and 2025, it received more than 16,200 complaints and completed 15 investigations.

GAO investigators flagged that a CIGIE staffer is currently disregarding complaints they deem as “frivolous” despite internal policy that such decisions are required to be reviewed by the entity’s legal counsel.

“Without a process for secondary review of the [program manager’s] decisions on what constitutes a frivolous complaint, actions taken by a single individual determine whether to pursue the complaint, even if the determination is not accurate,” they wrote. “Further, it increases the risk that the IC is not reviewing relevant complaints that it should have had an opportunity to consider.”

When the program manager determines that a complaint is significant, they refer it to a group composed of the IC legal counsel and representatives from the Office of Special Counsel and Justice Department to resolve any jurisdictional issues. This group reviewed 460 cases between fiscal 2021 and 2025.

Based on a generalizable sample of 79 cases, however, GAO found that this group missed at least one timeline requirement 76% of the time. As an example, for 49% of complaints, either the DOJ or OSC did not decide whether to forward it to the broader IC within seven business days.

When the IC decides to take on a case, it identifies an IG to investigate the complaint. But GAO reported that the IC conducts "limited oversight” of such investigations.

Notably, investigators found that IGs, when requesting reimbursement from CIGIE for undertaking these investigations, provided supporting documentation that was inconsistent and incomplete in the five cases they reviewed.

“Controls are not in place to ensure that reimbursement requests are properly reviewed for accuracy and to ensure that all costs are necessary and allowable. Rather, payments are made as requested,” they wrote. “This increases the risk that the IC may pay assisting OIGs for unnecessary or unallowable costs in conducting an investigation.”

CIGIE “concurred in principle” with all eight recommendations that GAO made in the report, including to require the IC legal counsel to examine potentially frivolous complaints, improve timelines for reviewing complaints and mandate more information from IGs for investigation reimbursement requests.

While agreeing with the recommendations, CIGIE Chair Cheryl Mason, who is also the Veterans Affairs Department IG, argued that the IC’s effectiveness is undermined by structural problems, namely regular leadership changes and a reliance on other IGs for investigations.

“This decentralized model has contributed in part to timeliness issues and inconsistencies in IC investigations,” she wrote in a letter attached to the report. “Oversight of this model is complicated by the IC’s rotating membership. The six IC members — who serve in these roles as required by the statute — all hold critical, full-time positions elsewhere.”

Good government groups and congressional Democrats have questioned Mason’s ability to operate independently as CIGIE chair because, prior to her confirmation as VA IG, she served as a senior adviser to VA Secretary Doug Collins.

Along with firing nearly 20 IGs, the Trump administration in 2025 blocked CIGIE from receiving funding for more than a month.

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Anti-fraud overhaul clears House despite Democratic concerns over privacy and IG independence

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 15:38:01 -0400

As the Trump administration prioritizes combating fraud in federal programs, the House this week passed almost a dozen bills, several of which are bipartisan, intended to strengthen agencies’ ability to detect and stop fraudulent payments.

The Fraud Prevention and Accountability Act (H.R. 8312) would establish an inspector general office within the Treasury Department dedicated solely to countering grift in programs that provide funding to non-federal entities.

This new IG for Fraud, Accountability and Recovery would subsume the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, a panel of IGs that was created in 2020 to oversee COVID-19 spending. Congress expanded the jurisdiction of the interagency entity, however, to include programs funded by the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The measure also would authorize the Treasury to share, on a voluntary basis, data tools with state and local governments that administer federal funds in order to prevent improper payments, such as by screening potential awardees against a centralized fraud database.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., characterized the measure as “the culmination of years of work to understand how agencies can improve their operations to protect hard-earned taxpayer money from fraudsters.”

“This legislation ensures there’s a permanent governmentwide anti-fraud analytics function to assist agency inspectors general with their fraud work,” he said during floor debate on Wednesday.

Most House Democrats opposed the bill, in particular because of the transfer of the PRAC to the new IG office. The committee is currently housed under the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, a central group for the agency watchdogs that the Trump administration blocked from receiving funding for more than a month last year.

The president also has fired nearly 20 IGs and has replaced many of them with individuals who worked in his first or second administration.

“Taking the PRAC out of CIGIE and moving it to a third new Treasury IG is another attempt to weaken the case for funding CIGIE and to further dismantle what remains of a community already very severely weakened by the Trump administration,” said Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., during floor debate on Wednesday.

Walkinshaw also referenced objections to the bill from nonprofits like the Center for Democracy and Technology, which argued that the data sharing provisions would result in the collection of “significantly greater amounts of sensitive information from agencies across the federal government, functionally creating a master database on all Americans.”

The House passed the measure in a 240-181 vote with the support of 28 Democrats.

Lawmakers also passed, without any recorded opposition, bills that would increase, from $10,000 to $20,000, the minimum monetary reward for federal employees whose disclosure of fraud, waste or mismanagement leads to cost savings (H.R. 428) and require certain government workers to receive training on preventing fraudulent and improper payments (H.R. 8428).

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Lawmakers press for tighter oversight of fast-growing prediction markets

Amelia Twyman, States Newsroom — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:27:58 -0400

A group of 16 Senate Democrats is calling on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to tighten its regulation of prediction markets, citing concerns over insider trading and other consumer harms as betting on future events grows in popularity.

The senators, led by Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., asked the CFTC to offer guidance to those participating in bustling prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket in an effort to restrict event contract manipulation and insider trading, according to the June 1 letter.

“The volume of event contracts trading on prediction markets has grown exponentially over the past 18 months,” the senators wrote. “These markets have a significantly higher proportion of retail participants than traditional derivatives markets, heightening customer protection concerns.”

The senators sent the letter before the CFTC proposed rules Wednesday that would ban bets on war, assassination and other extreme events, which critics said did not do enough to rein in the industry.

Lawmakers also want the CFTC to conduct detailed reviews of participating futures markets to ensure that their policies and procedures are clearly outlined and that they are equipped with adequate resources to prevent market abuse.

On a similar note, they wrote that the commission should instruct the markets to monitor the terms and conditions of event contracts, as ambiguous contract language can lead to conflicts over resolution and payout once an outcome has occurred.

“Sufficient resources should be devoted to anticipating and addressing such issues prior to contract listing, rather than after problems arise,” the senators wrote.

In addition to Klobuchar, the letter was signed by Sens. Lisa Blunt Rochester and Chris Coons of Delaware, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet of Colorado, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Cory Booker and Andy Kim of New Jersey, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

Concerns around insider trading

Prediction markets allow consumers to bet on the outcomes of future events and trade in products commonly called event contracts.

Most event contracts offer two possible outcomes, presenting traders with the option to bet either “yes” or “no.” The price of each outcome at any given time, expressed as a fraction of a dollar, corresponds to the market’s forecast of an outcome occurring, with $1 meaning 100%, according to the CFTC.

That system leaves the markets vulnerable to manipulation by people with inside knowledge of an event, which is partly what prompted the Democratic senators to write the letter, they said.

For example, a U.S. soldier was charged in April with making more than $400,000 on Polymarket by betting the United States would launch a military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Prosecutors say the soldier used classified information to make the wagers in advance of the operation.

The senators did not give the CFTC a deadline to carry out their requests. Rather, they urged the commission in their letter to consider their recommendations as it continues to develop rules and guidance for the prediction market industry.

The CFTC did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment in time for publication.

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Inspector general group announces pick to lead oversight of Iran war following senator’s questioning

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 14:52:05 -0400

Last week, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., requested that an oversight body for inspectors general assign one of the agency watchdogs to lead oversight of the war in Iran, pointing to a statutory requirement for such a designation with respect to a military “overseas contingency operation that exceeds 60 days.”

On Wednesday, the Defense Department OIG announced that it had been selected to spearhead oversight of Operation Epic Fury; although, officials said that the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency made the designation on May 12.

The U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes against Iran on Feb. 28.

“This lead inspector general designation not only follows the framework required in the IG Act, it also reflects the extensive experience of the [DOD] OIG with comprehensive oversight of overseas contingency operations,” DOD IG Platte Moring said in a statement. “We are collaborating closely with our colleagues to promote accountability and responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”

According to the announcement, the DOD OIG’s oversight of the war in Iran will be supported by the IGs for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development. While the Trump administration folded USAID into State in 2025, the USAID OIG is still active.

When selecting an IG to lead oversight of an overseas military operation, the CIGIE chair is limited to choosing the IG for DOD, State or USAID.

Moring was confirmed as the DOD IG in December 2025. He previously served as deputy general counsel at the department during Trump’s first term. Likewise, Cheryl Mason, who was elected as CIGIE chair in March, was confirmed in summer 2025 as the IG at the Veterans Affairs Department after a stint as a senior adviser to VA Secretary Doug Collins.

Government oversight advocates and congressional Democrats have criticized the president’s penchant for placing individuals, such as Moring and Mason, who have worked in his first or second administration in IG roles and questioned whether they can provide true independent oversight. Moring, though, received bipartisan support during his confirmation hearing.

As the designee, he will be responsible for developing a strategy for oversight of the war in Iran, reviewing the accuracy of associated spending information provided by federal agencies and resolving any jurisdictional crossovers. He also will be required to issue regular public reports on his office’s activities. The DOD OIG said the first quarterly report would be issued in the fall.

Duckworth celebrated Wednesday’s announcement.

“Now, as lead IG, the DOD IG must work expeditiously with his counterparts to conduct independent oversight of all programs and operations in support of President Trump’s costly, disastrous war, and — as I have requested — brief me on these matters without delay,” she said in a statement.

Relatedly, Trump on Monday nominated Carl Anderson to be State IG. The office confirmed to Government Executive that he is a former federal attorney, congressional staffer and has been a legal adviser at State since April 2025.

At the start of his second term, the president fired the former State IG as well as the watchdogs at 16 other agencies.

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USPS financial crisis won’t be solved until Congress defines its service mission, regulator testifies

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:49:32 -0400

The U.S. Postal Service’s regulator on Thursday argued that the agency’s financial woes will not be resolved until Congress sets up a funding system for the USPS that supports its desired service requirements, echoing calls from the agency’s leadership and other oversight entities.

“Only by first specifically defining what America needs of its postal service and what that costs will Congress then truly know how best to fix the fundamental funding structure while preserving appropriate service and delivery standards,” said Robert Taub, the vice chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations.

Postmaster General David Steiner testified to the panel in March that USPS could run out of money as soon as this fall. Because the PRC in April authorized the agency to temporarily suspend certain employer contributions to the Federal Employees Retirement System, however, Taub said that the looming financial cliff has been pushed back by several years.

“This is not a panacea nor a permanent or long-term fix to the postal service's problems, but it does allow Congress an opportunity to enact thoughtful and fundamental change as opposed to choices of desperation,” he said.

At the time, USPS officials said the FERS suspension would not cause “any immediate detrimental impact to current or future retirees,” and the PRC noted that the agency had only been making partial payments in recent years.

In March, Steiner also told the Government Reform Subcommittee that changes were needed to USPS’ self-sustaining business model and/or its service expectations: “If you want the same number of delivery days and post offices, we can do that, but someone has to pay for it. If you want to have a discussion about reducing services, we can do that.”

The Government Accountability Office also has long reported that USPS’ current business model is unsustainable.

Both Subcommittee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, and ranking member Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., agreed on Thursday that lawmakers need to reach agreement on what USPS service standards will be going forward in order to shore up the postal agency’s finances.

“If we don't do that, then we've just not done anything,” Mfume said. “I mean, we've just kicked the ball down the road.”

In addition to structural reform, Steiner and the USPS Board of Governors have called on Congress to increase the postal agency’s $15 billion statutory debt limit in response to the financial shortfalls. But Sessions expressed doubts about that proposal.

“There is no reason to assume additional borrowed funds infused into this unintended business model would be anything more than throwing good money at bad results,” he said.

Also during the hearing, PRC commissioners and members of both parties criticized Delivering for America — an ongoing postal modernization plan started by former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that he predicted would enable USPS to break even by fiscal 2023 generally by slowing some delivery and increasing the prices of certain products. But the agency experienced a net loss of $2 billion in the most recent quarter.

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GSA joins White House’s fraud prevention task force

Edward Graham — Fri, 29 May 2026 09:00:00 -0400

The General Services Administration announced on Thursday that it is joining the White House’s anti-fraud task force, a move that enlists a key federal acquisition agency into President Donald Trump’s self-described “war on fraud.”

The unit, led by Vice President JD Vance, was created by a March executive order and is tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse across federal benefits programs.

GSA said in a press release that it is “uniquely positioned to help the Task Force detect irregularities, accelerate investigations, and safeguard taxpayer dollars,” with members of the anti-fraud unit “now leveraging GSA’s unmatched reach in acquisition, shared services, technology modernization, and federal real estate.”

Although the order establishing the task force emphasized efforts to identify federal benefits fraud, GSA said it will support the unit’s work by identifying waste, fraud and abuse across government contracting programs.

“GSA sits at the center of the federal acquisition and contracting ecosystem, making us a critical force in the fight against fraud,” GSA Administrator Edward Forst said in a statement, adding that the agency “will bring advanced analytical capabilities, investigative support, and cross-government coordination to help expose high-risk fraud patterns and stop bad actors from exploiting taxpayer-funded systems.”

Trump’s directive establishing the task force also granted it the authority to withhold funds from states and local jurisdictions “that do not have adequate anti-fraud requirements.”

The effort has been clouded by allegations of political bias, however, with the order creating the unit notably calling out Democrat-led states and accusing public officials of intentionally failing to police benefits programs so migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border can receive assistance.

Vance said earlier this month the unit was “deferring” $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to California and threatened to withhold payments from other states if they do not adequately enhance their efforts to combat fraud in federal benefits programs. That came after the White House kicked off its anti-fraud push in February by announcing that it was withholding over $240 million in Medicaid funds from Minnesota following claims about the misuse of funds in the state’s social services programs.

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Citing legal requirement, senator wants a designated inspector general to provide oversight of Iran war

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 28 May 2026 15:01:00 -0400

Updated at 3:58 p.m. ET May 28

A Democratic senator on Thursday requested that an inspector general oversight body designate one of the agency watchdogs to spearhead reviews of the ongoing war in Iran, citing a requirement in federal statute.

In her letter, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., pointed to a provision in the U.S. Code mandating that the chair of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency tap an IG to head oversight of a military “overseas contingency operation that exceeds 60 days.”

The U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes against Iran on Feb. 28.

“IG quarterly reporting, audits, inspections and investigations related to OCOs have promoted valuable transparency and accountability across presidential administrations and enable federal agencies to be better stewards of taxpayer dollars,” Duckworth wrote. “The need for you to appoint a lead IG to advance these aims and conduct joint, comprehensive and independent oversight of contingency operations against Iran has never been greater, as the Trump administration’s explanations of the president’s purported mission, lines of effort and desired end states with respect to Iran are constantly shifting, and often contradict themselves.”

Defense Department officials have testified that the war has cost an estimated $29 billion.

The CIGIE chair is limited to selecting the IG for the Defense Department, State Department or U.S. Agency for International Development. While the Trump administration folded USAID into State in 2025, the USAID IG office is still active.

The designated IG would be responsible for developing a strategy for oversight of the military operation, reviewing the accuracy of associated spending information provided by federal agencies and resolving any jurisdictional crossovers. They also would be required to issue regular public reports on their activities.

In her letter, Duckworth argued that the war in Iran meets the definition of an OCO because Operation Epic Fury is identified as one in the DOD’s casualty database and because members of the National Guard have been deployed to the region. Under federal statute, if a military action includes ordering a member of the National Guard to active duty, that qualifies it as a “contingency operation.”

Duckworth requested that CIGIE Chair Cheryl Mason provide her selection for the IG by June 5. Mason also is the IG for the Veterans Affairs Department.

Andrew Cannarsa, CIGIE's executive director, said in a statement to Government Executive that the council has "received the letter from Senator Duckworth and is working to address the senator’s inquiry."

The senator has criticized Mason’s confirmation as VA IG and election to CIGIE chair because she previously served as a senior adviser to VA Secretary Doug Collins. As such, Duckworth and good government groups have contended that Mason cannot provide independent oversight.

This story has been updated with a statement from CIGIE.

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Labor oversight official faces ethics complaint for apparent congressional campaign moves

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 28 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

A government watchdog nonprofit on Tuesday requested an investigation into whether Anthony D’Esposito, the inspector general for the Labor Department, violated the Hatch Act, a law that restricts the political activity of civil servants.

The Project on Government Oversight’s complaint to the Office of Special Counsel, which enforces that law, argues that the former GOP lawmaker ran afoul of ethics rules by seeming to take steps preparing for another congressional run as a confirmed IG, a position that oversees independent audits and investigations of agency operations.

“We can't have inspectors general that are seen as attachments of the president or attachments of the agency,” said Joe Spielberger, a senior policy counsel at POGO, in an interview with Government Executive. “[If so] it means that when [the IGs] receive complaints, there's no guarantee that they will take those complaints seriously if they're directed against the executive branch or the party in power.”

In its complaint, POGO flagged several potential violations including:

D’Esposito’s campaign committee is still active based on the Federal Election Commission’s website.
Shortly after he was sworn in, he said during a radio interview that: “there’s no question that we’re exploring” a run for Congress,” “we’re doing the polling [and] we’re talking to people on the ground and we want to make sure that the resources are going to be there,” his Democratic successor is a “disastrous member of Congress” and that it’s important for Republican candidates to have funding to deliver effective campaign messaging.
Media reports that D’Esposito was planning to announce his candidacy.

Under the Hatch Act, there is a prohibition on federal employees from being candidates in partisan elections, which extends to preliminary activities such as conducting polls, having campaign strategy meetings or authorizing others to take such actions on their behalf. The law also bars government workers from engaging in political activity in their official capacity and from soliciting or receiving political contributions.

While D’Esposito ultimately opted not to enter the race, Spielberger argued that an OSC investigation is still warranted.

“His decision to withdraw his name from potential candidacy doesn't absolve him from what are potentially previous violations of the Hatch Act,” he said.

POGO’s complaint also notes that D’Esposito frequently shares political social media posts, such as ones criticizing Democratic immigration policies, praising congressional Republicans and echoing slogans associated with President Donald Trump.

Under federal law, IGs are required to be appointed “without regard to political affiliation.”

In an interview with Bloomberg Law published on Wednesday, however, D’Esposito said that he didn’t see any issue with his public statements.

“I’m never going to shy away from the fact that I’m a conservative Republican,” he said. “I’m never going to shy away from the fact that I support the agenda, especially as it pertains to this office, just because I want to maintain an appearance. That’s absolutely ridiculous.”

In April, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington nonprofit requested that the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, an oversight body for the watchdogs, investigate D’Esposito over matters similarly raised by POGO.

Trump recently nominated Charles Baldis to lead the OSC. Baldis is a former Senate staffer and current chief counsel at the agency who has been the designee of the OSC’s acting chief since spring 2025.

The president’s first OSC nominee, Paul Ingrassia, withdrew in October 2025 following objections from Senate Republicans over reports of sexual harassment accusations and racist text messages.

In March 2025, Trump removed the incumbent special counsel — Hampton Dellinger, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden — before the end of his five-year term. On one of the first days of his second term, the president also fired IGs at 18 agencies, including the DOL IG who D’Esposito later replaced.

The DOL OIG did not respond to a request for comment, but D’Esposito has previously testified that he is “well aware of the Hatch Act.”

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Someone robbed the SEC during the shutdown

Eric Katz — Wed, 27 May 2026 15:34:08 -0400

When federal agencies closed their doors for a record-setting 43 days last fall, one person saw an opportunity.

An individual is awaiting trial after burglarizing the Securities and Exchange Commission during last year’s government shutdown. The alleged thief did not wait long before entering the SEC regional office in Fort Worth, Texas, as the individual entered the building during the shutdown’s first week.

A contracted security officer was present for the incident, but failed to stop the person, identify them or sign them in, as building protocols require, the SEC’s inspector general said. The burglar “bypassed” a locked door, walked past the security guard and entered the SEC’s office suite. The security guard failed to escort the individual through the building and in the elevators, also in contravention of the building’s security policies.

The person then stole four laptops valued at more than $5,000, a bluetooth earpiece and a rolling briefcase.

Federal employees are generally prohibited from using their government devices during a shutdown if they are placed in non-working furlough status, but are required to report to their offices on the first day of a lapse to ensure their devices are secured. SEC furloughed 88% of its workforce during the most recent funding lapse, though an IG official was not aware of how many employees may have been reporting to the office during the burglary.

The SEC IG worked with local law enforcement to identify the suspect, who is now being held in a Texas corrections center on multiple burglary charges—including the SEC incident—while awaiting trial. While the suspect was arrested, the stolen laptops and other items were not recovered.

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FAA surges medical staff after whistleblower alleges issues with certifying pilots and controllers

Eric Katz — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:17:02 -0400

The Federal Aviation Administration has added 40% more staff to review health certifications of pilots and air traffic controllers after an employee blew the whistle on severe shortfalls that allegedly endangered the public.

The backlog may have led to hundreds of pilots flying who should not have been medically cleared to do so and delayed hiring efforts for new controllers, the whistleblower alleged to the Office of Special Counsel. OSC, which reviews allegations from federal whistleblowers, recommended the FAA employee for a monetary award as a result of his disclosure.

“I thank the whistleblower for coming forward and their steadfast commitment to safeguarding the flying public,” said Charles Baldis, OSC’s chief counsel. “The disclosure prompted meaningful reforms at the FAA, and the whistleblower’s actions reflect the essential role federal employees play in identifying risks and improving the safety of our nation’s aviation system.”

The whistleblower first filed his complaint in 2023 and OSC referred it to the Transportation Department for an investigation the following year. As part of the staffing issues, the whistleblower alleged that 1,200 individuals who were flagged for potential medical issues were flying without further evaluations from FAA and that long waits for the agency’s sign off causes some pilots not to disclose illnesses and injuries. The shortages also risked creating backlogs in hiring air traffic controllers, who, unlike pilots, must clear medical exams conducted by FAA staff before taking their positions.

At the time, the whistleblower said, around one-in-three medical officer roles were vacant at FAA, while their workloads had increased by 250% over the previous seven years.

Transportation ultimately did not substantiate the allegations, finding instead that bottlenecks can occur at several stages of the medical review process and no gross mismanagement or public safety risks occurred. Pilots first go through a screening with a private doctor, and those who are certified to fly then go through an automated, algorithmic review by FAA for any "anomalies." Most of those are resolved before FAA’s medical officers get involved, Transportation found in its report, and it was unlikely that 1,200 pilots were flying aircraft with medical conditions that would put them at risk.

The department concluded that an exceedingly small number of pilots require a lengthy review of their medical certificates and therefore the public is not at risk. It also noted pilots have an affirmative duty to report any medical issues they might have.

Still, FAA has made a concerted effort to bring on more physicians to review medical exams from pilots and air traffic controllers. That initiative got underway in the Biden administration, but carried forward after President Trump took office. The medical officer staff were exempt from workforce reduction efforts and the federal hiring freeze, and has grown by nearly 40% since September 2024. The agency has also sought to better educate potential pilots on the information and documents required of them and contracted out some of the administrative work required for ATC approvals.

OSC disputed Transportation’s decision declining to substantiate the allegations, noting FAA struggled to meet its mandated 60-day window to complete reviews of medical certifications. It also found FAA has for several years been on a controller hiring spree, while the medical staff remained stagnant. In 2023 it took 133 days for a controller to receive medical clearance and controllers cannot begin working or training without such clearance.

“OSC does not find the agency’s conclusions regarding the lack of safety risks appear reasonable, but we appreciate that the agency prioritized corrective actions to greatly increase staffing and efficiency in AAM to nonetheless resolve these concerns,” Baldis said.

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Agency partnerships are a potential financial lifeline for USPS, watchdog reports

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 21 May 2026 17:22:08 -0400

With the prospect of running out of money by fall 2026 looming, the watchdog for the U.S. Postal Service recently laid out how the agency could partner with other government departments to expand access to services and shore up its finances.

“Although the additional revenue government services may yield is uncertain, they could contribute to the bottom line and meaningfully advance USPS’s role as essential public service infrastructure,” the USPS inspector general wrote.

For example, investigators highlighted that USPS could expand the number of facilities providing FBI biometric identity verification services (e.g. taking of fingerprints). They reported that roughly 30.4 million people, 9% of the U.S. population, live more than an hour away from a post office offering these services, which can be needed for employment or international travel background checks.

The OIG also emphasized an ongoing pilot program between USPS and a private company to offer TSA PreCheck enrollments and renewals at post offices.

“If the Postal Service was able to work with the TSA to provide the service at the 1,250 postal locations already equipped with biometric hardware, USPS would improve access for applicants, in particular in rural areas where private vendors lack a physical presence,” investigators wrote.

The Federal Communications Commission also suggested that postal facilities could lease their roofs for 5G and broadband towers in order to expand access, especially in rural areas. This would not be wholly unfamiliar territory for USPS, as the OIG noted that the postal agency already leases space for communications infrastructure at around 60 locations.

Nonpostal government services in fiscal 2025 yielded $387 million for USPS, about 0.5% of total operating revenue. Of that amount, 80% came from passport processing, which post offices have been offering in conjunction with the State Department since the 1970s.

The OIG stressed that USPS is not limited to federal partnerships. The Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 authorized the post office to work with state, local and tribal governments. Despite this, officials have no interagency agreements with these governments and have not conducted outreach.

State agencies in Texas, for example, told the OIG that postal facilities could act as “multi-agency hubs” to “bridge service gaps in remote areas where citizens may currently travel over 100 miles for state services.”

Investigators did note that USPS between 2021 and 2022 partnered with the California Department of Motor Vehicles on a pilot program to install DMV kiosks in post offices for vehicle registration renewals. They wrote that it was not continued due to “insufficient demand.”

The OIG recommended that USPS establish a strategy with steps to identify and gauge opportunities to expand services across different levels of government. USPS officials agreed with the recommendation and said they would “formalize and refine” past similar efforts into a singular roadmap.

Postmaster General David Steiner has expressed support for creating more partnerships with other agencies. He recently testified that USPS could run out of money as soon as fall 2026.

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Newest inspector general nominees show shift from overtly political backgrounds

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

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

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

Justice Department

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Education Department

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

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

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

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

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

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

Housing and Urban Development Department

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Watchdog recommends nearly 100 ways for agencies to save tens of billions

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 12 May 2026 16:31:29 -0400

The Government Accountability Office on Tuesday released its annual report highlighting duplicative federal programs and opportunities to promote effectiveness and efficiency across agencies. Officials estimated that implementing their new and past open recommendations could save more than $100 billion.

Some of the new 97 recommendations for lawmakers and agencies include:

Officials should consolidate mission-support services (e.g. payroll and travel) among agencies, which GAO reported could save tens of millions of dollars over three years. Specifically, the watchdog recommended that the Office of Management and Budget and General Services Administration improve data collection with respect to the effectiveness of shared services.
The departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs should identify more opportunities to share healthcare resources, which could reduce fragmentation and also save tens of millions of dollars annually.
FBI should lead the creation of a government-wide anti-scam strategy to spur collaboration, as 13 different agencies work to prevent scams.

Investigators reported that, as of March, agencies had fully or partially addressed 1,662 (77%) of recommendations that GAO has made in these annual reports for the last 16 years, yielding about $774.3 billion in financial benefits. Officials acknowledged, however, that this is a “rough estimate based on a variety of sources that considered different time periods and used different data sources, assumptions and methodologies.”

In the latest report, GAO also flagged past recommendations that remain unimplemented including:

Establishing an inventory of federal programs, which includes funding and performance information, to help identify duplication and overlap. The watchdog found in a March report that such an inventory created by OMB is missing statutorily required information.
Setting up a process to identify and remove ineligible family members from the Federal Employees Health Benefits program, which the watchdog said could save more than $1 billion over nine years. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was enacted in July 2025, included a requirement to fulfill such a recommendation, but the Office of Personnel Management hasn’t implemented it yet.
Improving the IRS’ enforcement efforts. Congressional Democrats in 2022 approved nearly $80 billion for the tax agency, in part, to enhance tax collections, but lawmakers since then have rescinded more than two-thirds of that funding.

The House Republican fiscal 2027 legislative branch appropriations bill would cut GAO’s funding by nearly 25%. Congress in fiscal 2026 held the watchdog’s funding level flat despite an attempt by the House GOP to halve it. The Trump administration has criticized GAO for issuing several findings that officials illegally withheld congressionally approved spending.

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Federal discipline was never supposed to be punitive. The MSPB appeal framework reflects that

Justin Schnitzer — Tue, 12 May 2026 06:00:00 -0400

There is a legal principle embedded in the federal disciplinary system that most federal employees never hear about, and that most federal managers are not taught, even though it is the single most important concept for understanding how the Merit Systems Protection Board evaluates adverse actions.

Federal discipline is supposed to be rehabilitative, not punitive.

This is not an attorney's argument or an advocacy position. It is the doctrinal foundation of the Douglas factors framework established in Douglas v. Veterans Administration, 5 MSPR 280 (1981), which remains the controlling standard for penalty review in MSPB cases forty-five years later. The Board's twelve-factor analysis is built on a core question: not "how bad was this," but "does this person have the potential to be rehabilitated into a productive federal employee."

That distinction matters for both managers and employees, and it is worth examining carefully against the current backdrop. For readers who want the structural framework before reading the analysis, this MSPB appeal walkthrough covers how the Douglas factors function within the broader appeal process.

What the Douglas framework actually asks

When an MSPB administrative judge reviews whether a penalty is proportionate, the twelve Douglas factors build a profile of the employee, not just the offense. They include the nature and seriousness of the conduct, the employee's job level, their past disciplinary record, their length of service and prior performance, the potential for rehabilitation, and the existence of mitigating circumstances such as unusual job tensions, personal difficulties, or provocation.

Factor 10, potential for rehabilitation, is where cases are often decided. An employee who accepts responsibility for the conduct, demonstrates understanding of why it was wrong, and shows concrete steps toward not repeating it is signaling rehabilitation. An employee who denies, deflects, or makes false statements during the investigation is signaling the opposite, and that signal carries significant weight with administrative judges.

This framework also requires agencies to impose consistent penalties. Douglas Factor 6 asks whether the penalty is consistent with penalties the agency has imposed on similarly-situated employees for similar conduct. Douglas Factor 7 asks whether the penalty is consistent with the agency's published table of penalties. Agencies that deviate from their own established penalty ranges are required to justify that deviation, and recent precedent has opened more discretion for judges to mitigate feds' punishments, reinforcing the proportionality review.

What the current caseload reflects

The MSPB received 20,335 initial appeals in fiscal year 2025, approximately four times its normal annual volume, according to the Board's Annual Performance Report published April 3, 2026. The surge was driven largely by probationary terminations and reduction-in-force actions. Of the 9,050 cases processed at the regional and field office level in FY 2025, only 55.8 percent were resolved within 120 days.

That caseload volume does not change the legal framework. The Douglas factors review applies regardless of the number of cases on the docket. What it does change is the practical context in which managers and HR professionals are operating. Adverse actions issued at volume, without individualized Douglas factors analysis, without consistency review, without consideration of rehabilitation potential, create appeals that are more likely to generate either Board reversals or settlements on unfavorable terms.

Settlement rates have been declining for years. It has been becoming rarer for federal agencies and employees to resolve adverse action disputes through settlement, and the FY 2025 data confirms the trend has continued. The legal test for penalty proportionality is not relaxed because the agency is processing a large number of actions simultaneously. Administrative judges apply the same framework to mass actions that they apply to individual ones.

The reply stage as the first checkpoint

For employees facing proposed adverse actions, the procedural structure gives them a meaningful opportunity to engage the Douglas framework before the case reaches the Board. Under 5 U.S.C. § 7513(b), employees have the right to reply in writing and orally to the deciding official before the final action is taken. An effective reply frames the employee's conduct in the rehabilitative context, demonstrating accountability, context, and a clear case for proportionality under the Douglas factors. In my practice, that framing gives the deciding official a substantive basis for reducing or withdrawing the proposed action.

What federal managers should understand

Managers who initiate proposed adverse actions under the assumption that the Board will simply defer to the agency's judgment are operating on outdated assumptions. The Federal Circuit affirmed 91 percent of MSPB decisions reviewed on the merits in FY 2025, which means the Board's decisions are robust to appellate review. But the Board will apply the Douglas factors to whatever the agency proposes, and penalties that are disproportionate, inconsistent with established tables, or unsupported by evidence of the employee's rehabilitation potential are subject to mitigation. The MSPB has long advocated nontraditional approaches to discipline for precisely this reason.

The most defensible adverse action from the agency's perspective is one that can demonstrate, against each applicable Douglas factor, that the penalty selected is proportionate, consistent, and based on individualized assessment. That standard is more demanding than simply documenting the misconduct.

The rehabilitative framework is not an idealistic legal theory. It is the law that governs whether the penalty your agency imposed will survive review.

Justin Schnitzer founded The Law Office of Justin Schnitzer, a Washington, D.C. federal employment law practice focused on MSPB appeals, federal EEOC matters, and adverse action defense. His analysis of federal workforce policy has appeared in Forbes, US News & World Report, NBC News, Newsweek, and the ABA Journal.

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The number of feds in tax debt spiked during the pandemic

Eric Katz — Mon, 11 May 2026 17:03:01 -0400

The rate of federal employees who fail to pay their taxes on time has grown in recent years, according to a new audit, though the Internal Revenue Service is hopeful it can soon shrink the figure.

The federal workforce still overwhelmingly pays its taxes on time, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found in a new report, though the delinquency rate has grown from 4.9% in 2021 to 6.9% in 2024. There were 215,000 federal workers who had outstanding tax bills as of 2024, a 45% jump from 2021. They collectively owed $2.1 billion, up from $1.5 billion three years prior.

IRS officials attributed much of the increase to a pause of various collection efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The IRS began a phased-in resumption of the levy program in August 2024 and anticipates that the delinquency rates will decrease in the coming years,” the inspector general said.

Still, the auditors implored IRS to do a better job ensuring federal employees pay their taxes on time. IRS is prohibited from sharing its list of non-compliant feds with other agencies, a ban the IG suggested the Treasury Department lobby Congress to change.

“If taxpayers (i.e., non-federal employees) are aware that federal employees are not timely satisfying their tax obligations, it may impact their willingness to comply with their own tax matters,” the IG said.

The watchdog noted that Treasury has an obligation to hold employees accountable for tax noncompliance and its rate for such workers is just 2.4%.

IRS and Treasury last year collaborated to mail 427,000 notices to federal employees and retirees delinquent on their taxes, which led to nearly 65,000 of those individuals making at least some payment on their tax bills. Agency officials said that was a one-time initiative and it would not be sending additional notices.

The tax agency in 1993 launched a program to specifically track and identify federal workers who fall behind on their tax bills. The number of employees working on that program dropped in half last year as part of IRS’ overall effort to shrink its workforce. Still, the agency said it has introduced additional enforcement of delinquent federal workers and is now prioritizing that population in its collection activity two days per week instead of one day per quarter.

As of 2024, there were 572,000 combined federal employees retirees who were not up to date on their taxes. That figure jumped by 43% since 2021 despite the overall population slightly declining. They owe $6.3 billion in taxes, a 32% increase.

About 50,000 current employees failed to file a tax return for multiple years. More than 1,000 employees are delinquent on their taxes for at least six years. The IG said it referred the 122 federal workers who were at least eight years behind to IRS’ Criminal Investigations division.

Federal employee advocates have noted over the years that the civil servants maintain a delinquency rate far lower than that of the U.S. population.

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More than 3-in-4 allegations of sexual assault against federal prison staff are going unresolved

Eric Katz — Wed, 06 May 2026 13:41:57 -0400

Allegations of sexual abuse against staff at federal prisons are overwhelmingly left unresolved after the Bureau of Prisons is unable to draw a conclusion on whether such incidents occurred, according to a new report that found the federal Bureau of Prisons is frequently ill-equipped to handle those investigations.

Allegations of rape and sexual misconduct against federal corrections officers by inmates have spiked in recent years, the Government Accountability Office found in its review of enforcement of the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), and the bureau is in many ways failing to implement the law in the way Congress intended.

From 2014 through 2022, federal inmates logged nearly 4,000 complaints of sexual abuse against prison staff. Just 9% of those were substantiated by BOP, though 77% saw investigations end inconclusively. The agency proved the incidents did not occur in just six cases, or about one-tenth of 1%.

A similar trend emerged from sexual abuse allegedly committed by incarcerated individuals, with 81% of those cases reaching inconclusive findings.

GAO separately found federal prison guards faced around 3,000 allegations of sexual abuse from 2020 through 2024, a significant uptick in incident rate from prior years. From 2014 through 2022, BOP averaged 433 allegations against its staff per year. In 2023 and 2024, that spiked to 857 per year.

When an allegation of sexual abuse is made, the bureau deploys an evidence recovery team for and a local nurse conducts a rape kit if the alleged event had just occured. Employees said, however, that they often learn of allegations well after the fact, such as after an inmate transfers from a different facility.

GAO reported last year that BOP’s Office of Internal Affairs had 12,153 open allegations in its employees misconduct caseload, though the agency said most were not related to PREA violations. More than one-third of those cases had been open for at least three years. GAO noted the bureau has ramped up its efforts to address the backlog, including by deploying strike teams of investigators to facilities with particularly large caseloads.

Still, employees told the auditors that they have insufficient staffing for responding to allegations of sexual abuse, including a shortatge of investigators. Longstanding personnel shortages at the agency have led to less general supervision that in turn allows misconduct to fester, officials told GAO. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Trump signed into law last year included $3 billion for BOP staffing, though criminal justice reform advocates have faulted the Trump administration for cutting PREA grants last year.

Abusers also employ tactics to avoid repercussions. Most of the corrections officers with whom GAO spoke said abusers know where they can go to evade cameras and some said the video quality is poor or not retained for a sufficient amount of time. Employees also said investigations against staff can take time, often years, to complete.

Corrections officers told GAO that false allegations of sexual abuse are prevalent and waste resources and tarnish the credibility of those reporting real incidents. Incarcerated individuals told the auditors that their fellow inmates make false accusations against prison staff as a form of retribution.

Still, corrections officers overwhelmingly told GAO they “would not hesitate to report sexual abuse perpetrated by employees against incarcerated individuals.”

PREA sought to establish a “zero-tolerance policy” for rape in U.S. prisons while tasking the Justice Department with instituting national standards for preventing, investigating and tracking such incidents. GAO noted sexual abuse “remains a significant problem” in federal prisons despite some progress under the law. The auditors titled a blog post accompanying their report “The Heinous Crimes Haunting Federal Prisons.”

Facilities that have been found to be fully compliant with the law have maintained the highest incident rates of sexual abuse in the country, GAO found. PREA requires ongoing audits of federal prison facilities, but GAO said current practice fails to detect ongoing sexual abuse. When the bureau contracts auditors for those investigations, it does not ensure they meet established requirements and they do not always have access to key documentation.

“Sexual assault is a heinous crime that can have lasting, harmful effects on survivors,” GAO said. “The issues identified through this report highlight that not all correctional facilities are meeting the intent of PREA.”

GAO cited BOP for a slew of additional failures, including its decision to only focus on cultural issues at women’s facilities and not men’s. It noted the bureau does not publish or analyze uniform data across the bureau to identify trends.

Jolene Lauria, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for administration, said BOP agreed that it must assess its approach on PREA enforcement and vowed to implement all of GAO’s recommendations. Various hiring initiatives will address staffing shortages that lead to coverage issues, officials said, and the agency will look at bringing on staff with specific experience in data analysis. It will also ensure the third-party investigators who conduct PREA audits have access to the documentation they need and review their training and guidance materials to enhance detection of ongoing sexual abuse.

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Agencies doled out $186B in improper payments last year, GAO says

Natalie Alms — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 16:48:58 -0400

The federal government made at least $186 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2025, according to a report released Monday by Congress’ watchdog.

The Government Accountability Office’s new estimate comes as the Trump administration continues to doggedly pursue its “war on fraud” to hunt out fraudulent government spending.

The latest numbers offer a point-in-time look at how the government is doing with preventing payments that shouldn’t have been made or were made in the incorrect amount. The category is broader than fraud, which is defined by willful misrepresentation. Although the majority of the $186 billion evaluated by GAO are overpayments, at least $10 billion of the total is money that should’ve been sent out, but wasn’t.

The government’s improper payments total is up by about $24 billion from the prior fiscal year, although that’s largely because of changes in what programs reported data, GAO said. The watchdog audited the improper payment data from 15 agencies’ financial statements across 64 programs.

Most of the improper payments are concentrated in five programs, GAO found, including Medicare, Medicaid, the earned income tax credit and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

The Trump administration has been zeroing in on fraud in Medicare and Medicaid already, as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz announced last week that the Trump administration will require all states to revalidate Medicaid providers.

Oz has also announced state-level Medicaid probes, mostly of blue states, as part of his effort to stamp out fraud, although that rollout hasn’t been flawless. Last month, CMS admitted to an error in the fraud analysis of Medicaid in New York that it used to justify the scrutiny into the state program.

The White House is also working across federal agencies to comb through government programs as part of Trump’s anti-fraud task force being led by Vice President JD Vance.

The crackdown is happening as midterms loom, with voters saying that they’re concerned about healthcare affordability.

Critics of the administration’s anti-fraud work say the administration is using the issue as a pretext for political goals and that false claims and the dismantling of government watchdogs are worsening the problem.

“As someone who has spent my career fighting fraud, I welcome any renewed attention on ferreting out fraud,” Mark Lee Greenblatt, formerly the inspector general at Interior Department, told Nextgov/FCW. But he said some of the administration’s moves have been “puzzling.”

“They’ve proposed slashing OIG budgets markedly. And that is counterproductive to the fight against fraud,” said Greenblatt. “If you want to fight fraud, fund the fraud-fighters.”

Trump fired Greenblatt and about 20 other watchdogs soon after taking office last year. He also issued nearly three dozen pardons and commutations for people accused of fraud last year.

Lawmakers have also taken on the mantle of fraud fighting. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is planning to mark up nine bills tomorrow focused on the issue. Among them is a proposal to create a permanent anti-fraud data platform for OIGs. Oversight officials have long recommended that lawmakers improve data sharing within the government.

The bills being considered are a “huge bright spot,” Linda Miller, an anti-fraud expert who worked at GAO for years, told Nextgov/FCW. They remove “a ton of barriers that I have been talking about for a decade.”

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Catch me if you can’t: How fraudsters are outpacing the government

Jordan Burris — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0400

For years, conversations about government fraud have focused on scale. The numbers are staggering. The Government Accountability Office estimates between $233 billion and $521 billion is lost to fraud annually but if we say the quiet part out loud that estimate is far too low. The reality that emerged from a recent cross-government roundtable of federal leaders shines a light on the urgency in this moment that is greater than any single number.

Fraud is no longer just large. It is fast.

Today’s fraud landscape is defined by speed, adaptability, and coordination at a level government systems were not built to match. What once took months to orchestrate can now happen in days, or even hours. As detailed in the report from the roundtable, in one documented case, fraud actors used artificial intelligence to generate more than 24,000 synthetic identities and launch nearly 36,000 attacks within a matter of weeks, many within just 48 hours of identity creation. That velocity makes it increasingly hard to keep up with the fraudsters.

This is no longer a question of fixing gaps in existing systems. It is a structural mismatch between how quickly fraud evolves, how slowly public sector controls adapt, and how the public sector continues to implement yesterday’s approaches to stopping fraud to a next generation problem. Programs designed to update annually by looking backwards are facing threats that iterate in real time and not as slowly as the federal budget process.

At the same time, something else is happening beneath the surface. The signals the government has long relied on to detect fraud are weakening. Identity markers, like consistent email addresses, phone numbers, and device fingerprints, are disappearing as fraudsters deliberately engineer around them. The result is a system where traditional safeguards are not just failing, they are being outpaced. And yet, the most striking takeaway from the roundtable was not the risk. It was the opportunity to do something better.

Prevention Is Finally Within Reach

There is now clear, operational evidence that fraud can be prevented before it happens. Recent efforts across Treasury and oversight bodies show that earlier intervention, backed by better data and modern analytics, can stop improper payments upstream without slowing down services. Prevention and speed are no longer opposing forces. Done right, they reinforce each other.

For decades, the government has relied on a “pay and chase” model. Funds go out quickly, and fraud is identified, prosecuted, and recovered later. But recovery is expensive, slow, and often incomplete. Prevention, by contrast, is immediate and far more effective. The challenge is that government incentives have not fully caught up.

Today, agencies are still rewarded for rapid disbursement and post-payment recovery, even as practitioners and evidence alike show that earlier screening delivers better outcomes. Fixing that misalignment is fundamentally a policy challenge.

The Coordination Problem

That theme emerged most sharply in discussions around federal grants. It is clear there are tools the public sector has available to prevent fraud, some older and many that have yet to be adopted. However, the responsibility, data, and intelligence is spread across agencies, states, and systems that were never designed to work together. When billions of dollars move through decentralized structures, even small coordination gaps can create significant exposure. Closing those gaps requires orchestrating what already exists, not reinventing the system.

And there are real reasons for optimism. Data-sharing authorities are expanding. Tools like Treasury’s Do Not Pay system are proving their value, identifying and preventing millions in improper payments with strong returns on investment. (This strategy is only scratching the surface of what is needed.) Perhaps most importantly, there is growing bipartisan consensus that prevention must happen earlier in the payment lifecycle. The Administration’s recent Executive Order on Fraud demonstrates commitment at the highest levels.

The Window to Act

The question now is whether that momentum can be sustained and scaled. Because fraud actors are not waiting. They are already adapting to new controls, leveraging artificial intelligence, global infrastructure, and increasingly sophisticated identity strategies. The window to respond is now measured in days or months, rather than years.

The takeaway from this roundtable is that the path forward is clearer than ever.

Move prevention upstream before the payment goes out.
Treat data and fraud risk intelligence sharing as essential and find the right way to do it.
Align incentives with outcomes that reward dollars never lost, not just dollars recovered.

Fraud is evolving quickly. The real test is whether government can evolve just as fast.

Jordan Burris is the Head of Public Sector at Socure, an industry-leading digital identity verification provider. Burris was previously Chief of Staff to the Federal CIO at the White House during the first Trump Administration.

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Severe staffing cuts at GSA are harming agencies across government, watchdog says

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 14:12:13 -0400

The General Services Administration conducted staff cuts in 2025 without analyzing what skills it needed in order to fulfill its mission managing federal buildings, the top federal watchdog found in a new report, leaving the agency scrambling to address ensuing gaps in service.

GSA’s Public Buildings Service oversees about 8,500 owned and leased government properties. As part of the Trump administration’s push to reduce the number of federal employees, the division went from more than 5,600 employees to approximately 3,100 over the course of 2025.

The agency achieved these reductions mainly through voluntary separation incentives (such as the deferred resignation program) and layoffs. Investigators noted, however, that GSA in September 2025 rescinded nearly 400 of the PBS reduction in force notices.

The Government Accountability Office flagged several issues with how GSA conducted the workforce reductions and broader reorganization:

Officials did not develop performance measures to gauge the success of the overhaul.
PBS leadership communicated with stakeholders and employees about these changes generally after, rather than before, they were implemented.
The agency does not have a “systematic plan” to monitor that the reforms are being enacted.
Officials conducted an analysis to determine how many personnel with certain skills were needed to fill gaps in the agency only after staff cuts had already taken place.

“The Public Buildings Service reduced staff first and then assessed workforce gaps retroactively,” investigators wrote. “Without strategic workforce planning that carefully considers long-term staffing plan and associated personnel costs, a skills gap between the agency’s workforce capacity and its mission-related activities may result in reduced or disrupted service delivery.”

One agency that relies on GSA reported that its employees are no longer certain who their point of contact is at PBS. Officials from another agency told GAO that they have had to extend project timelines due to a reduction in the number of employees who conduct cost estimates before a building can be offloaded. The Trump administration has prioritized selling underutilized federal properties.

GAO recommended that GSA set performance metrics for the reorganization, continuously solicit and incorporate feedback from stakeholders, monitor implementation of the reforms and address skills gaps in PBS.

GSA Administrator Edward Forst agreed with the recommendations in a letter attached to the report and reported some progress in implementing them, including establishing new agency performance goals and initiating employee pulse surveys.

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Inspectors general targeted for funding cuts in Trump’s FY27 budget

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 16:09:18 -0400

In 2025, Donald Trump fired nearly 20 inspectors general and replaced acting IGs at five agencies. The Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit that has been critical of the president’s federal workforce reforms, in an analysis published on Tuesday argued that the administration is seeking to further weaken the oversight offices through the budget process.

Based on the fiscal 2027 budget request, which was released earlier this month, researchers found that Cabinet department IGs would receive an average of 12% less in funding than they did in fiscal 2024 (the last full fiscal year of the Biden administration.) The IGs at the departments of Interior and Justice would each be cut by 28%, which are the steepest declines.

“Audits and investigations require time and resources,” the Partnership wrote. “A 28% budget reduction does not simply mean doing the same work more efficiently. It means doing less of it. Fewer audits conducted, fewer investigations opened and fewer recommendations made to agencies — and longer timelines for the work that does get done.”

Congress rejected many of Trump’s fiscal 2026 requests to significantly cut agency funding.

Administration officials, according to the Partnership, project an average 9% reduction in staffing at Cabinet IGs, which is on top of a 10% average workforce cut at the agencies that occurred in 2025. Likewise, the Public Citizen nonprofit found in a March report that the overall number of IG employees has shrunk by about 12% as a result of the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize the civil service.

While the number of vacant IG positions increased after Trump’s mass firings, the Senate has only confirmed eight of the president’s IG nominees — most of whom previously worked in Trump’s first or second administration.

Cheryl Mason — the IG for the Veterans Affairs Department, who previously served as a senior adviser to VA Secretary Doug Collins — in March was elected as the chairperson of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. The Trump administration had blocked fiscal 2026 funding for the watchdogs’ central group but backtracked after pressure from Senate Republicans.

Partnership researchers reported that the five IG offices with the deepest proposed cuts across budget and staffing do not have permanent leadership.

“An office operating under an acting inspector general, with a staff 21-35% smaller than it was two years ago and a budget facing further cuts, is not simply a leaner operation,” they wrote. “It is a fundamentally hampered one.”

The Project on Government Oversight nonprofit argued that cutting IG offices ultimately hurts the country’s financial outlook, pointing to data that every dollar spent on IGs in fiscal 2024 yielded $18 as a result of their work to root out fraud, waste and abuse.

“Investing in inspectors general invests in effective government,” said Caitlin MacNeal, POGO’s communications director, in a statement to Government Executive. “Firing inspectors general and slashing their budgets undermines accountability."

Mark Lee Greenblatt, who was IG at the Interior Department before he was fired by Trump, contended that the proposal to cut spending on the watchdog offices contravened the administration’s effort to combat fraud.

“If the goal is to fight fraud, the IGs should be getting larger budgets – not smaller,” he said in a statement to Government Executive.

Administration officials have previously said that IGs have become “corrupt, partisan and in some cases, have lied to the public.” During his first term, Trump fired the IG whose notification to Congress led to his first impeachment.

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