Government Executive - Workforce

OPM finalizes ‘Nixonian’ rule centralizing and enabling some federal firings

Erich Wagner — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 16:04:42 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management this week finalized new regulations granting the agency the power to remove federal workers across government over issues of suitability or misconduct, as the Trump administration launches a new phase in its quest to sidestep decades-old civil service protections.

For decades, OPM has had the authority to rule out federal job applicants over conduct that may make them unsuitable for public service. But once someone has been hired—and completed a one-year probationary period—individual agencies have been responsible for addressing misconduct using the same procedures as they employ to remove poor performers, known as Chapter 75 procedures, which include avenues for the impacted employee to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.

But last year, President Trump issued a memo instructing OPM to create a system by which the HR agency can remove employees for “post-appointment” conduct, outside of the strictures of Chapter 75. In a final rule published in the Federal Register Tuesday, OPM said going forward, both it and employing agencies may take a suitability action to remove a federal worker for alleged misconduct.

“Despite the clear intent from both Congress and the president—stretching over decades now—that agencies should not rely on Chapter 75 procedures to address post-appointment conduct covered by the factors described in [the suitability regulation], today agencies still largely must rely on Chapter 75 procedures to remove employees who engage in serious misconduct,” OPM wrote. “This means that, illogically, the government has far greater ability to bar someone from federal employment who has committed a serious crime or misconduct in the past than it does to remove someone who engages in the exact same behavior as a federal employee.”

While MSPB still has jurisdiction over appeals to suitability determinations, OPM earlier this year proposed additional regulations that would bring those appeals in-house to OPM for adjudication. The suitability regulations are set to take effect July 30; the plan to move of some employee appeals to OPM has yet to be finalized.

This week’s rule also expands the range of conduct that may attract a suitability determination to include: failure to comply with legal obligations, including the “timely” filing of tax returns; refusal to sign a non-disclosure agreement or a violation of an in-effect NDA; and theft, misuse or “negligent loss” of government resources or equipment.

Jenny Mattingly, vice president of policy and stakeholder engagement for the Partnership for Public Service, highlighted how the administration has spread pieces of its campaign to reduce the federal workforce’s civil service protections across an array of regulatory and policy changes. Complementing the addition of NDA provisions to the list of reasons for a suitability determination is OPM’s push to issue a standardized governmentwide NDA for federal workers, which critics have assailed as an attempt to chill whistleblower activity and curb employees’ constitutionally protected speech. And Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee announced last week that the panel would begin investigating tax delinquency among federal workers.

“These new criteria are very broad in some respects, and open to interpretation,” she said. “And then, when you put the determinations of what those interpretations are into the hands of the political head of an agency, our concern is that it makes it easier to politicize the removal of federal employees . . . It really centralizes everything under OPM in a way that hasn’t been done before.”

Dan Meyer, a partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC, a law firm specializing in federal employment law, said this regulation, taken in concert with the Trump administration’s other civil service policies, amount to an effort to rebuild President Nixon’s political control of the workforce prior to the enactment of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act.

“This is a pretty aggressive agenda to roll back the Civil Service Reform Act,” he said. “[This] is what this is trying to do: to bring back centralized control . . . This administration is as if Nixon got three terms: all the agenda items from 1969 through 1971 are moving forward. That’s why [Arthur] Schlesinger called it ‘The Imperial Presidency,’ because of the centralization of power.”

And Mattingly said that even setting aside her organization’s policy concerns, it remains an open question as to whether OPM can handle all of its new authority.

“At this point there are multiple appeals processes—not just suitability—that are being pulled into OPM,” she said. “The question we keep raising is: does OPM even have the capacity or the capability to handle these types of things? It’s unclear whether OPM has the budget, the people or the skillsets to actually manage all of these things.”

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Union accuses Treasury and HHS of neglecting telework requests from employees with disabilities

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:46:17 -0400

The Treasury and Health and Human Services departments are breaking federal rules by largely ignoring reasonable accommodation requests from employees with disabilities, the National Treasury Employees Union alleged in a lawsuit filed on Monday.

“The defendants are failing to administer even basic threshold steps required by law, regulations and their own internal procedures, such as acknowledging receipt of requests, routing requests to a designated reasonable accommodation coordinator, communicating with employees throughout the request process, resolving requests promptly or considering interim accommodations while requests are under review,” the plaintiff attorneys wrote.

As a result, NTEU said that its members have been forced to use up their time off, risk their health by reporting to work in person and, in some cases, leave federal service.

When the Trump administration ended work-from-home flexibility for the civil service at the start of the president’s second term, officials exempted qualifying employees with disabilities. Nevertheless, workers across government have reported widespread denials and revocations of reasonable accommodations, which agencies are legally required to provide unless doing so would cause an “undue hardship,” that permit telework.

According to the lawsuit, Treasury in March 2025 updated its policy to require a bureau head or designee as well as the deputy secretary to review and approve each request for telework that lasts for more than two weeks. By May 2025, officials reported a reasonable accommodation backlog that exceeded 6,500.

In response, the department in June 2025 lowered the approval threshold to a bureau head, among other changes, but specified that the official couldn’t delegate the authority. The NTEU attorneys noted that this meant only a handful of individuals were responsible for reviewing potentially thousands of reasonable accommodation requests.

The IRS told employees last month, according to the filing, that it was eliminating the form that had been used to apply for a reasonable accommodation, and it’s unclear to employees with pending requests whether they need to resubmit them.

While the NTEU attorneys acknowledged that HHS overhauled its reasonable accommodation approval procedures in September 2025, they described the process as “effectively unavailable or defunct.”

Unions representing workers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an HHS component, alleged in 2025 that the agency hadn’t processed reasonable accommodation requests for several months due to layoffs at its Equal Employment Opportunity Office.

In the lawsuit, NTEU spotlighted some of their members’ experiences, such as Shakira Williams, an HHS employee who has been waiting for more than a year for a response to her telework reasonable accommodation request in relation to PTSD.

Likewise, Benita Brown, an IRS worker, had her interim telework reasonable accommodation for a knee injury that caused mobility issues revoked in July 2025. She then provided the agency with additional medical information but hasn’t received a response. Due to not being able to telework, she used medical and annual leave, but when that ended, she was deemed AWOL.

The union also said that members submitted telework accommodation requests related to pregnancy and lactation that “were not processed before the need for accommodation had passed.”

“This lawsuit is about these agencies’ indifference and apathy towards employees with medical needs,” NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said in a statement. “It’s about treating employees with common human decency.”

Specifically, the union requests in the lawsuit that the court compel Treasury and HHS to process reasonable accommodation requests within certain timelines.

Neither department responded to a request for comment.

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IRS agrees to stop stealing workers’ pro-union decorations

Erich Wagner — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 18:00:02 -0400

The Internal Revenue Service has agreed to cease policing employee workstations and communal spaces for union paraphernalia, in an apparent victory for the National Treasury Employees Union, who sued to stop the practice earlier this month.

Last month, IRS leadership issued a directive to its Facilities Management and Security Services personnel instructing them to confiscate NTEU-related materials from agency facilities using “whatever steps are necessary” short of vandalizing non-union property, purportedly to conform with President Trump’s executive order banning collective bargaining at the agency. Since then, the union has collected multiple reports of the agency taking NTEU-blazoned materials out of employees cubicles and literally papering over communal bulletin boards with union literature and decorations.

NTEU filed a lawsuit earlier this month seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the practice, contending that the directive and the agency’s subsequent enforcement actions amount to a violation of union members’ First Amendment rights.

But according to a stipulation filed to the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, IRS officials have agreed to halt its campaign, at least for now. The document, submitted jointly by the agency and NTEU, states that management would “pause further implementation” of its directive and that employees may resume displaying union materials both at their desks and in common areas.

The agency also agreed to return any NTEU materials that it had previously confiscated, provided that they were not already thrown out, destroyed or otherwise lost. Under the deal, NTEU’s lawsuit would be held open, albeit in abeyance. If IRS moves to re-implement its directive, it would be required to give the union five days’ notice, giving labor leaders a chance to renew its request for an injunction.

In a statement Tuesday, NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said the agency’s swift retraction of its anti-NTEU order indicates that it “plainly” violated union members’ free speech rights.

“Now, after NTEU’s motion for a preliminary injunction and a subsequent conference before a federal district court, the IRS has agreed to halt its illegal actions,” she said. “It has likewise agreed that IRS employees can once again proudly display NTEU materials in common spaces and at their workstations and that it will return the NTEU materials that it brazenly confiscated from employees . . . This victory achieves what NTEU would have gotten through its motion for emergency relief. And it shows, more broadly, that NTEU will do whatever it takes to defend its members’ rights.”

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Judge halts Trump administration effort to exert political control over union elections

Erich Wagner — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 17:40:30 -0400

A federal judge in Massachusetts on Monday struck down an effort by the Trump administration to exert greater political control over union elections at federal agencies, finding that the agency’s regulatory changes were “arbitrary and capricious” under federal law.

Since 1983, representational matters—like requests to conduct a union election or for workers to choose from between multiple labor groups—have been primarily handled by the Federal Labor Relations Authority’s cadre of regional directors and their career staff. Appeals stemming from a petition—or subsequent election—are handled by the FLRA’s three-member board of political appointees, who are subject to Senate confirmation.

But in March, the FLRA issued an interim final rule that stripped its regional directors of their authority to act in these cases, stating that beginning the following month, regional directors would work “collaboratively” with political leadership to process representation petitions, with the three-member board having the final say. Under the new regulations, appeals would only be available in instances when the FLRA’s board lacks a two-member quorum, which the agency claimed would be more efficient.

A coalition of federal employee unions sued to block the new rules in April, contending violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, the federal law requiring agency policy changes to be well-reasoned and communicated, arguing that saddling the three-member authority with hundreds of new cases would make the union election process less, not more, efficient. And since unlike most FLRA cases, those involving representational matters may not be appealed to federal appellate courts, the rule leaves unions without redress in the face of a wrongful decision.

U.S. District Judge Denise Caspar on Monday sided with the labor groups, finding that the FLRA’s justification for the rule was undercut by the agency’s own data. In 2025, 277 representation petitions were filed with agency regional directors, of which only six were appealed to the authority’s three-member board. And by the agency’s own admission, it anticipates only five appeals in representation cases for all of 2026 and 2027.

“Although in the realm of procedure, agencies are presumed to have special competence and, accordingly, are held to less exacting standards of explication . . . courts are not willing to ignore matters that are common knowledge,” Caspar wrote. “Here, it is a matter of ‘common knowledge’ that changing from a system in which multiple regional directors are deciding matters to one in which the authority must reach a collective decision on all representation matters will increase not just the authority’s caseload, but the processing and adjudication times for representation matters as well. The FLRA has provided neither an explanation nor data to suggest otherwise.”

Caspar also found that the FLRA failed to take into consideration the fact that unions and federal employees have to come to rely on the existing union election process—and the ability to appeal a regional director’s decision to the three-member board—over the last four decades. While agencies are not required to preserve a regulation or process due to those “reliance interests,” the Administrative Procedure Act requires agencies consider and address them when making changes.

“The FLRA only states that ‘because the authority will be performing the [representation] functions itself, rather than delegating them to the RDs, an appeals process will no longer be necessary,” Caspar wrote. “There is no indication from the record that the FLRA considered the reliance interests that plaintiffs raise here. While the FLRA was, of course, under no obligation to conclude that these reliance interests outweighed any particular policy concerns, making that difficult decision was the FLRA’s job, but the FLRA failed to do it.”

Caspar’s ruling effectively nullifies the FLRA’s March rule and amendment to its delegation of authority, and tasks the agency and unions with collaborating on a final order formally vacating the regulations.

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Despite criticism of Trump’s SES reforms, senior executives group backs recent updates to training program

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 15:20:13 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management on June 25 issued a final rule to overhaul a Senior Executive Service preparation program in order to “enhance training and development for aspiring SES and accelerate the development of well-prepared leaders to ensure leadership continuity.”

The Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program helps agencies identify and prepare federal employees who wish to join the cadre of the highest-ranking career staffers. Qualifying graduates of the program can receive an SES appointment without further competition.

Some of the changes that the new rule makes to the program include:

Authorize OPM to create a governmentwide SESCDP.
Specify that an agency SESCDP must last between 12 to 24 months and increase the number of executive training hours from 80 to 100.
Require a minimum of 10 hours each for coaching and mentoring as well as a continuous 180-day assignment outside of the scope of the candidate’s “position of record.”

OPM officials argued in the rule that these changes are necessary to promote standardization across agency SESCDPs.

“Inconsistencies among SESCDPs have yielded mixed results across participating agencies. That variability has resulted in different training and development experiences for SESCDP participants and leads to some programs that are more effective than others in preparing their leaders,” they wrote. “This causes fluctuating levels of candidate placement rates and creates challenges in supporting governmentwide succession planning efforts.”

While the Senior Executives Association has criticized several of the reforms that the Trump administration has made to the SES, the professional organization backed the training updates.

“The Senior Executives Association welcomes OPM’s final rule on SES Candidate Development Programs,” SEA President Mary Kate Whalen said in a statement. “Preparing the next generation of federal executives is essential work, and we appreciate OPM’s sustained attention to building a leadership corps that is capable, accountable and ready to serve.”

The organization warned, however, that the new training requirements could lead to costs that “fall unevenly across agencies” and urged OPM to help agencies share resources.

The Partnership for Public Service nonprofit reported recently that the number of career employees in the SES has decreased by nearly 30% since the start of Trump’s second term.

The Trump administration has limited the number of senior executives who can receive top performance ratings, put more weight in reviews on whether the SES member is aligned with the president’s priorities and called on agencies to redesignate more of their senior positions as being open to political appointees.

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OPM’s new suitability authority blurs the line between hiring vetting and employee discipline

Brett Mencin and Bill Pedersen — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 07:00:00 -0400

For decades, federal agencies faced a familiar challenge: what do you do when a trusted employee breaks your trust by engaging in serious misconduct? The long-standing answer has been that you navigate the adverse action process, many view as cumbersome, time-consuming and often falling short of resolving the problem. The process leaves some involved wondering about an apparent incongruity: if a job candidate with a recent past of employment misconduct, such as time theft, would be found unsuitable by the agency’s security office and never even allowed to start working for the government, why is time theft by a trusted employee not considered a suitability concern?

The reason is that legal and regulatory authorities have historically drawn a distinction between suitability authorities and adverse action authorities based on when an individual’s misconduct occurred. If conduct occurred before hiring, suitability authorities could come into play. If it happened after an employee entered federal service (post-appointment), suitability authorities were generally not available and agencies typically relied on traditional adverse action procedures.

A recent Office of Personnel Management (OPM) update to the federal suitability regulation at Title 5, Code of Federal Regulations, part 731 (5 CFR 731) has now flipped the script. OPM’s update to 5 CFR 731 gives the agency authority to take suitability actions based on post-appointment conduct. While the change may sound technical, it has the potential to reshape how agencies respond to misconduct identified through continuous vetting and other personnel security programs.

The timing is significant. As agencies continue to implement Trusted Workforce 2.0 and expand continuous vetting enrollment across the federal workforce, they are receiving more timely information about employee misconduct and risk indicators. Continuous vetting identifies potentially concerning conduct using automated records checks, traditional investigative activity at certain time intervals or in response to certain life events and information maintained locally at the agency, like disciplinary complaints or security incidents. The question is no longer whether concerning conduct will be identified; it is how agencies and OPM will respond when it occurs.

For the approximately 1.1 million federal employees who serve in the competitive service, OPM’s implementation decisions could determine whether the new suitability authority becomes an infrequently used enforcement tool or a significant new component of the federal personnel vetting landscape.

The regulatory change: What changed in 5 CFR 731?

OPM’s authority to take suitability actions against employees in the competitive service and career Senior Executive Service (SES) is not new. Historically, however, suitability actions were tied to conduct that occurred before appointment.

Once an individual entered federal service, agencies generally relied on adverse action procedures to address misconduct. This remained true even when concerning information surfaced through periodic reinvestigations or continuous vetting. Agencies could evaluate the conduct using suitability adjudicative standards, but they lacked authority to take a suitability action based on newly discovered post-appointment misconduct.

The revisions to 5 CFR 731 change that framework.

OPM can now take suitability actions based on conduct that occurs after an employee has already entered federal service. Importantly, OPM reserved this authority for itself. While agencies can identify employee misconduct and refer the matter to OPM for action, only OPM has the authority to pursue a post-appointment suitability action.

For employee relations and personnel security offices, that distinction matters. Agencies may identify conduct they believe renders an employee unsuitable for continued service, but OPM retains sole discretion regarding whether to pursue a suitability action.

If OPM declines to act, agencies must rely on traditional adverse action procedures.

Why agency referrals matter

A suitability action can carry significant consequences, including removal from federal employment, cancellation of certain employment eligibility and debarment from future federal employment for up to three years.

Historically, OPM has exercised its suitability authority only in cases where it determined a government-wide debarment was warranted. Across the personnel security community, many practitioners have viewed OPM’s threshold for government-wide action as relatively high. In fact, in response to OPM’s proposed rule, one comment claiming to represent the Veterans Health Administration stated that when suitability referrals to OPM are made, OPM has “rarely assumed jurisdiction or taken action,” and that OPM declines to act in many cases where it’s warranted due to limited resources, using a “bigger fish to fry” approach.

As a result, agencies have frequently expected OPM to decline action unless the conduct was particularly serious, prompting some personnel security practitioners to question the value of even sending OPM a referral.

That historical practice becomes especially important when evaluating the potential impact of OPM’s new authority.

Understanding the traditional framework

Consider an applicant from a state where recreational marijuana is legal who admits to using marijuana for several years during a background investigation for a federal police officer position. Imagine he states he was aware that marijuana use is illegal federally and that he will stop using marijuana if he gets the federal police officer job. The marijuana use in question would be considered pre-appointment conduct.

The agency may find the applicant admitting to routine marijuana use over several years concerning and can refer the case to OPM for a government-wide suitability evaluation. OPM may find the conduct troubling and may even agree with the agency’s assessment that the individual should not serve in a law enforcement position where a willingness to disregard federal laws is at odds with the core duties of the job. OPM may find, however, that given evolving societal norms around marijuana, the conduct still does not warrant a government-wide debarment from all federal jobs.

In that situation, the agency still retains authority to act on its own. If the agency’s mission places special emphasis on drug enforcement, for example, it may determine that the applicant is unsuitable for employment within that organization and impose an agency-specific debarment under suitability authorities.

That flexibility largely disappears in the post-appointment context.

Because OPM reserved authority over post-appointment conduct for itself, agencies lack the same agency-specific suitability fallback option. If OPM chooses not to pursue a suitability action, the agency must use standard adverse action procedures through human resources or employee relations channels.

Two possible paths forward

The update to 5 CFR 731 does not require OPM to limit post-appointment suitability actions to cases warranting government-wide debarment. In fact, it never has. OPM’s practice of setting that high threshold for acting has been a choice, not a regulatory requirement.

With its new authority for post-appointment suitability actions, OPM could continue following its historical practice and reserve suitability actions for only the most egregious cases. If that occurs, agencies will likely see only a modest increase in suitability action activity, while traditional employee relations processes remain the primary mechanism for addressing misconduct discovered through continuous vetting.

However, OPM could choose a broader approach.

OPM could use suitability authorities in cases that warrant removal but not government-wide debarment. If that happens, personnel vetting offices may become involved in substantially more misconduct cases than they are today.

Misconduct matters that historically remained within HR or employee relations offices could increasingly move into personnel vetting channels before being referred to OPM.

For security managers and personnel vetting professionals, that would represent a substantial operational change.

There is a wildcard factor worth noting: OPM has wide latitude in defining what conduct warrants a government-wide debarment. The traditional threshold for debarment-worthy conduct is included in OPM’s Suitability and Fitness Processing Manual. OPM includes tables in the manual to help agencies identify situations that may warrant government debarments. For example, OPM identifies the following conduct as potentially debarment-worthy:

Homicide, drug or alcohol addiction or gross misconduct or negligence in employment
Two or more instances of grand theft, assault or prescription fraud
Three or more instances of shoplifting, driving under the influence or minor disruptive behavior (e.g., disorderly conduct, criminal mischief)

OPM could redraw the line in the sand, if it desired. It could decide that a single instance of an offense like shoplifting or driving under the influence warrants a government-wide debarment.

To be clear, there has been no indication that OPM intends to lower the bar and impose debarments for minor infractions. The simple fact that it could, though, raised serious concerns among those who submitted over 1,400 public comments when OPM first proposed the regulation update.

OPM normally updates its suitability manual after a significant update to the regulation. If it does, any updates to the tables within could indicate whether the thresholds might change.

Key considerations for federal agencies

If OPM ultimately adopts a broader implementation approach, taking suitability actions in situations that do not warrant government-wide debarment, agencies will need additional guidance on:

Referral thresholds and case-selection criteria
Information sharing between personnel security and employee relations offices
Evidence requirements supporting suitability referrals
Coordination best practices among HR, employee relations and personnel vetting functions
The relationship between continuous vetting findings and suitability actions

Trusted Workforce 2.0 has already increased the speed at which agencies receive information about potential risk indicators. OPM’s implementation decisions will determine whether the government’s response mechanisms evolve at a similar pace.

The real impact

The regulatory update to 5 CFR 731 answers only part of the question. The larger question is how frequently OPM will use the authority and what types of cases it chooses to pursue.

As agencies continue to implement Trusted Workforce 2.0 and expand continuous vetting programs, OPM’s early decisions will provide the first indication of whether post-appointment suitability actions become an enforcement tool that is the exception to the norm or a routine part of the federal personnel security landscape.

The rule is final. The practical impact will depend on how OPM chooses to use its new authority.

And the story may soon have a next chapter. Today, both adverse actions and suitability actions come with the right to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board (Merit Systems Protection Board). In February 2026, OPM proposed a separate update to 5 CFR 731 that would change the venue where appeals of suitability actions are heard. Instead of appealing to MSPB, individuals subjected to suitability actions would appeal to Office of Personnel Management.

Could moving suitability appeals from MSPB to OPM alter OPM’s implementation approach to post-appointment conduct actions? If OPM elects to take actions even in cases that do not warrant a government-wide debarment from the beginning, the outcome of its suitability appeals proposal is unlikely to change that approach. If, however, OPM initially takes a conservative approach and uses its post-appointment suitability authority only in the most egregious cases warranting debarment, a move of suitability appeals from MSPB to OPM could embolden OPM to revisit that conservative approach and adopt the more aggressive approach.

The rule is final.

Its practical impact remains to be seen.

Bill Pedersen is a Background Investigation Enablement & Strategy Lead with Xcelerate Solutions and brings decades of experience in federal personnel security, suitability, and vetting reform. As a former Division Director within OPM's Suitability Executive Agent Program, he led Trusted Workforce 2.0 initiatives, authored key national policies, and earned the OPM Director's Individual Award for Customer Service.

Brett Mencin is the President, Enterprise Vetting & Analysis, and Chief Security Officer at Xcelerate Solutions, where he leads a diverse portfolio supporting the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Army, the Intelligence Community, and other federal agencies. Brett has played a key role in advancing federal vetting programs, reengineering business processes, and strengthening organizational performance across government. He is a recognized subject matter expert in personnel vetting and security and a frequent speaker at industry conferences and professional forums.

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Lawmakers, unions and civil society groups urge withdrawal of governmentwide NDA plan

Erich Wagner — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 18:21:58 -0400

Federal employee groups, lawmakers and good government organizations in recent days have announced their formal opposition to the Trump administration’s plan to require federal workers sign non-disclosure agreements, arguing the measure would violate employees’ First Amendment rights and chill whistleblower activity.

The Office of Personnel Management first announced its plan in May, issuing a notice in the Federal Register and soliciting public feedback. In its one-month comment period, the initiative has attracted more than 30,000 comments, the bulk of which appear to oppose it.

OPM has argued that leaks of information, primarily to the press, have been disruptive to executive branch operations, citing Government Executive reporting on internal criticism of a then-planned regulatory proposal to overhaul federal performance management.

“Unauthorized disclosures of confidential government information disrupt agency operations and erode public trust,” OPM wrote. “In recent months, unauthorized disclosures have included internal government materials not intended for public release such as pre-decisional documents and interagency comments exchanged during internal coordination processes . . . Such disclosures risk chilling candid interagency feedback, disrupting orderly decision-making and weakening trust within and among federal agencies.”

But in a series of filings before the comment period closed over the weekend, federal stakeholders excoriated the draft NDA as an effort to intimidate federal workers into silence rather than report instances of waste, fraud or abuse. The National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association took issue with OPM Director Scott Kupor’s comparisons to NDAs in the private sector.

“The federal workforce is not a private-sector workforce accountable to private owners or shareholders,” wrote NARFE National President William Shackelford. “Career employees swear an oath to the Constitution, serve the public, and often carry statutory duties to report wrongdoing, provide information to Congress, cooperate with inspectors general, participate in grievance and labor processes, and adhere to professional and evidentiary standards. Layering a broad new NDA on top of these existing obligations risks shifting the culture of public service away from accountability and toward secrecy.”

The American Federation of Government Employees, the nation’s largest union representing federal workers, said the administration’s arguments fail to explain why the myriad existing rules governing the disclosure of confidential government information are insufficient or how this new measure would alleviate those purported deficiencies.

“OPM claims that the proposed NDA does not impose any additional legal obligations on federal employees, and is instead merely an attempt to promote consistency across government and to inform employees of their obligations regarding confidential information,” the union wrote. “But if this were genuinely the case, there would be no need for the proposed NDA at all. It would be unnecessary because federal employees are already routinely informed of their obligations regarding confidential information. In truth, the Proposed NDA goes far beyond existing legal requirements and seems plainly designed to intimidate federal employees and chill their lawful and legally protected speech, including speech about personnel matters and matters of public concern that is a vital part of the Unions’ work.”

The union warned that the NDA could also infringe on labor officials’ and members’ rights and duties under federal sector labor law.

“The First Amendment problems of the proposed NDA are manifold: it is an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech; it is unconstitutionally overbroad; it violates constitutional principles prohibiting vagueness and viewpoint discrimination; it conditions a public benefit based on a waiver of a constitutional right; and it restricts members’ right to associate for expressive purposes,” AFGE wrote. “For example, by broadly restraining the content of the communications made between the unions and their members—and also communications made between the union’s members in connection with their union—on matters relating to those members’ conditions of employment, the proposed NDA impedes one of the unions’ core functions and infringes on their and their members’ associational rights.”

Lawmakers of both parties were also critical of OPM’s proposal. A group of 44 House Democrats called the measure an effort to “hide this administration’s waste, fraud, abuse and corruption from the American people,” while Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, warned that the NDA plan’s current protections for whistleblowers are insufficient.

“The OPM draft nondisclosure agreement form includes a partial anti-gag provision, but it is not the exact same as the version required by existing law,” he wrote. “While the form does provide that the nondisclosure agreement does not prohibit an employee from making a whistleblower disclosure to Congress and inspectors general, it fails to include the Office of Special Counsel. Accordingly, OPM must immediately update the draft nondisclosure agreement form to include disclosures to the Office of Special Counsel.”

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Bill would limit federal relocations to states with abortion restrictions

Erich Wagner — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 16:04:48 -0400

Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., and 26 other House Democrats introduced legislation Wednesday aimed at protecting federal workers’ reproductive rights in the wake of the balkanization of abortion rights across the United States.

Since the Supreme Court issued Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the abortion rights spelled out in Roe v. Wade, in 2022, 13 states have enacted—or revived long-dormant—bans on abortion, while another six have restricted the procedure to between the first six to 12 weeks of gestation.

The Federal Workforce Reproductive Rights Protection Act would bar agencies from relocating their headquarters or at least 5% of their employees to states that have erected or re-implemented abortion restrictions in the last four years. It also would ban the purchase or new leasing of property in the state—only lease renewals for existing or entirely in-person public-serving facilities would be exempt.

The bill also would grant federal employees the chance to opt out of details, relocations or reassignments to states that have restricted or banned abortion; similarly, agencies would not be able to condition a job or promotion on the applicants’ living in or moving to those jurisdictions. The proposal also would bar the government from asking federal workers and job applicants abortion-related questions as part of the security clearance process and bans retaliation against employees and jobseekers who avail themselves of the bill’s protections.

And feds living in states that have restricted abortion would be eligible for both paid administrative leave and transportation allowances to help defray the costs of traveling to a jurisdiction to receive reproductive health care. Shortly after Dobbs was issued in 2022, the Biden administration similarly authorized paid leave for abortion-related travel, albeit under the category of paid sick leave.

In a statement Wednesday, Walkinshaw said that federal workers should not be forced to choose between their career and obtaining reproductive health care.

“Federal workers serve this country in every state and territory, and they deserve to know their employer will protect their health, privacy, and family,” Walkinshaw said. “Since Dobbs, millions of Americans have been forced to navigate a dangerous patchwork of state abortion bans and restrictions. For federal employees, who can be ordered to relocate or accept assignments across the country, that threat is especially real. This bill protects public servants from being punished, pushed out or put at risk because they need lawful reproductive health care.”

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Lawmakers warn acting intelligence chief against major workforce changes

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:10:05 -0400

Top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees warned acting spy chief Bill Pulte on Monday not to use his temporary post to make major changes at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, citing concerns that he could pursue sweeping personnel cuts or politically motivated declassification decisions before a Senate-confirmed director is in place.

In a June 22 letter to Pulte, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Pulte should not take actions “more appropriately left to a Senate-confirmed Director” and reminded him of his legal obligation to preserve records related to any actions he takes in the role.

The warning comes days after Pulte began serving as acting director of national intelligence following the cancellation of a Senate hearing for Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee to permanently lead the intelligence community. The delay ensured Pulte would assume the acting role, prolonging a fight that has already complicated bipartisan efforts to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a powerful foreign spying authority that lapsed earlier this month.

Democrats have warned Pulte’s role in the administration’s mortgage fraud reviews last year could foreshadow the use of intelligence tools to pursue the president’s political opponents.

In Monday’s letter, Himes and Warner sharpened that concern, saying Pulte’s record as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency showed “a willingness to misuse your position, including your access to sensitive information,” to pursue Trump’s perceived political enemies.

The lawmakers said they expect Pulte to not declassify information in a way that would compromise intelligence sources and methods or “weaponize the declassification process for partisan political purposes.” They also said any declassification effort should follow established policies and include input from career intelligence officials on the national security risks of releasing classified material.

The letter also directly addresses multiple reports that Pulte could soon fire or place on leave hundreds of ODNI employees. Himes and Warner said they were concerned by those reports and argued that any large workforce reduction would come after substantial downsizing at ODNI already occurred this year.

Pulte could serve in the acting role through August, The New York Times reported Monday, citing an administration official.

“Given your lack of experience within the Intelligence Community, it is difficult to imagine that in such a short amount of time you have already developed fully-informed views as to how to shrink ODNI without incurring risks to national security,” they wrote.

A spokesperson for ODNI didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

The office was created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to improve coordination across the intelligence community. Trump has said he wants Pulte to further downsize the office and continue election-related investigations launched under former DNI Tulsi Gabbard.

Himes and Warner said Pulte should refrain from making significant structural changes to ODNI, including any reduction in force, while serving in an acting capacity and without consulting Congress.

The lawmakers also said Pulte and ODNI employees must preserve records related to declassification, publication or release of classified materials, as well as personnel actions. They said that obligation extends to electronic messages sent through official or personal accounts, text messages, phone-based messaging apps and encrypted software.

They requested that Pulte soon acknowledge the letter and confirm his “full and immediate compliance” with legal records-preservation requirements.

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Unions urge court to force ruling in ‘loyalty question’ lawsuit

Erich Wagner — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:59:19 -0400

A coalition of federal employee unions this week urged a federal appeals court to compel a lower court judge to act upon a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s introduction of essay questions that many say amount to a presidential loyalty test for federal jobseekers.

The American Federation of Government Employees, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the National Association of Government Employees sued the Office of Personnel Management last November after the government’s dedicated HR agency introduced four essay questions to be issued with all federal job postings, including one question asking applicants their favorite Trump policy or executive order.

While OPM has insisted that the essay questions are optional and will not be used to adjudicate hiring decisions, the unions have argued mere presence alone serves to both coerce or chill the speech of federal jobseekers and highlighted evidence that at least in some instances, responses were, in fact, mandatory.

The unions had asked U.S. District Judge George O’Toole, a Clinton appointee in Massachusetts, for a preliminary injunction blocking federal agencies from including the essay questions as part of their job application process. Both parties had filed their legal briefs on the matter by December 10, and a hearing on the unions’ motion was held on March 11.

But since then, the case has ground to a halt. The unions on Monday filed a writ of mandamus with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, requesting the appeals court compel O’Toole to publish a decision on the proposed injunction “promptly.”

In their filing, the unions said that in the time since they first requested the court take action, the deployment of the essay questions has expanded rapidly.

“When the unions filed their complaint, the loyalty question had appeared on over 5,800 job postings on USAjobs.gov, the website operated by OPM that serves as ‘the federal government’s official employment site,’” they wrote. “By the time briefing was completed on the motion, approximately 8,500 jobs had been posted with the loyalty question. On April 27, 2026, the unions informed the court that they had learned, contrary to the government’s representations, that applicants could not skip answering the loyalty question on USAJobs postings. In the same notice, the unions apprised the court that the loyalty question had appeared on over 33,000 job postings.”

As of press time, nearly 48,000 job postings on USAJobs featured the essay questions as part of the application process, according to an online tool that scrapes the various listings on the job site.

“Every day that the [Merit Hiring Plan] is not stayed or enjoined, the unions’ members who are interested in federal jobs face the dilemma of how to respond to this plainly unconstitutional loyalty question—by speaking favorably about the current administration’s policies regardless of the individuals’ own personal convictions; by speaking on political matters (when they would prefer not to speak); by remaining silent when they would prefer to offer their sincerely held views but feel they cannot; or by declining to apply to jobs that include the offending question,” the unions wrote. “In other words, every day, the unions’ members endure irreparable First Amendment injury.”

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NSF is using its HQ move to revoke telework for workers with disabilities, employees say

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 13:41:48 -0400

The National Science Foundation is reviewing employees’ reasonable accommodations, as the agency relocates its headquarters to a nearby building. But several employees allege that officials are using the move to revoke telework flexibility for workers with disabilities.

While President Donald Trump ended work from home for most of the federal workforce at the start of his second term, his administration exempted employees with disabilities who telework under a reasonable accommodation. Officials are legally required to provide reasonable accommodations (e.g. accessible technology) to better enable a worker to perform their job, unless doing so would result in an “undue hardship” for the agency.

Nevertheless, employees at several agencies — including now NSF — have contended that the Trump administration is blocking civil servants with disabilities from receiving telework reasonable accommodations.

“There are people with cancer, people who cannot walk and people with major disabilities, and [officials] are telling them that telework will not be an option,” said an NSF employee who preferred to be unnamed due to fears of retaliation.

In employee testimonials provided by American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, which represents federal research staffers, NSF workers said the officials reviewing reasonable accommodations are offering unclear guidance and pushing alternative accommodations that don’t meet their needs.

One worker said that the experience “created an environment where I no longer felt psychologically safe advocating for my medical needs” due to fears of retaliation or having to leave their job if a reasonable accommodation isn’t granted, while another said their stress level has gone “through the roof” and that they’ve “developed additional symptoms related to [their] disabilities as well as a new physical condition as a result.”

Likewise, a different NSF employee, who said they’ve previously renewed their reasonable accommodation without issue, wrote in a testimonial that the agency HR’s response to emails has been “incredibly delayed,” but workers are required to fulfill requests for additional information with “fast turn arounds.”

Agency employees are particularly perplexed by the apparent crackdown on telework, as most of them are currently working from home due to the headquarters move. The Housing and Urban Development Department began transferring its workforce to NSF’s former headquarters in Alexandria, Va., this spring.

NSF is in the process of moving to a building that is close to its old headquarters, and the agency employee said the expectation is that workers will start working from that office in a staggered schedule over the summer.

An NSF spokesperson said in a statement to Government Executive that the agency “prioritizes the health and safety of its staff and remains committed to fulfilling all legal obligations under the Rehabilitation Act. Exercising due diligence, NSF continues to implement the reasonable accommodation process and assess the new workplace environment while most of its staff are teleworking during the transition to its new headquarters.”

The agency did not address a question about the schedule of the relocation.

The NSF employee said that the scrutiny of reasonable accommodations is worsening morale at the agency, which has also been impacted by the Trump’s administration’s staff reductions and changes to the grantmaking process.

NSF’s workforce went from around 1,700 employees in 2024 to just under 1,150 in 2026, according to federal workforce data. And the Office of Management and Budget recently proposed overhauling the federal grantmaking process, including by requiring political appointees to approve awards to ensure they advance the president’s priorities.

“[These are] the foremost scientists and administrators in the country, who for decades have ensured that not a penny of taxpayer money is wasted, and [they’re] now being collapsed and attacked by a bunch of folks who have no scientific training,” the NSF employee said.

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In rare move, full appeals court agrees to hear case challenging Trump’s ‘Article II’ firings

Erich Wagner — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 17:22:53 -0400

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Wednesday granted two former Justice Department employees’ request to expedite the appeal of their 2025 firings, which the Trump administration has argued were exempt from civil service rules.

Megan Jackler and Brandon Jaroch were removed from their positions as immigration judges last year, with Article II of the Constitution cited as the sole justification for their termination. An administrative law judge overturned both employees’ firings, but in March, the Merit Systems Protection Board reversed that decision, in the process relinquishing jurisdiction over cases in which federal agencies cite constitutional authority to justify an adverse personnel action.

MSPB’s decision, upending decades of precedent, found that inferior officers, like federal immigration judges, may be removed at-will, provided their responsibilities do not exceed “limited duties and no policymaking.” That ruling came after the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion arguing that the quasi-judicial body is “obligated” to consider agencies’ constitutional claims during adverse action appeals.

But attorneys for Jackler and Jaroch, who appealed MSPB’s ruling directly to the Federal Circuit, said the decision misconstrues a description of inferior officers in a Supreme Court case involving removal protections for principal officers for a distinction creating two tiers of inferior officer—some whose responsibilities are limited and for whom removal protections are legal and others whose duties exceed that threshold and may be removed at will.

The former immigration judges appealed MSPB’s decision directly to the Federal Circuit court and requested that the entire court hear the case, rather than the traditional three-judge panel. Appellate courts rarely grant such requests—the last instance in recent memory was when the same court agreed to hear legal challenges to President Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs, which the Supreme Court ultimately invalidated earlier this year.

“The petition and response were referred to the circuit judges in regular active service,” the court’s order states. “A poll was requested and taken, and the court decided that the petition for review warrants en banc consideration.”

Since Trump returned to office last year, hundreds of Justice Department workers have been subject to so-called “Article II firings,” including immigration judges, employees previously assigned to cases investigating the president and prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases. The immigration judges’ appeal has attracted support from federal employee unions, Democratic lawmakers, as well as a professional association representing MSPB workers, who all have filed friend-of-the-court briefs.

In a statement Wednesday, Nathaniel Zelinsky, an attorney with the Washington Litigation Group representing the fired feds, applauded the court’s ruling.

“The Federal Circuit’s decision to hear this case en banc indicates how important this appeal is,” he said. “The government has asserted a constitutional right to neuter the laws that protect our nation’s public servants from abuse and discrimination. That is as legally wrong as it is deeply unjust. We look forward to arguing this matter before the full court of appeals.”

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NTEU sues IRS over destruction of employees’ pro-union decorations

Erich Wagner — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 17:55:25 -0400

The National Treasury Employees Union on Monday sued the Internal Revenue Service, alleging that the agency has begun confiscating and disposing of pro-NTEU flyers and other decorations from employees’ communal and personal workspaces in violation of their First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., documents multiple occasions in which IRS Facilities Management and Security Services personnel stole NTEU paraphernalia from workers’ cubicles, and it reports widespread efforts to literally paper over communal bulletin boards where the union’s flyers are often posted.

“The two FMSS employees walked from cubicle to cubicle to relay this message to even those employees who were not displaying NTEU materials at all to deter them from putting up such materials in the future,” the lawsuit states, describing an incident at an IRS office in Decatur, Ga. “And both FMSS employees came to [local NTEU chapter President Lakisha] Murphy’s cubicle to instruct her to remove her NTEU materials; otherwise, they said, they would remove those materials at the end of the workday. That is what happened: FMSS removed NTEU flags from three cubicles and disposed of them in the men’s restroom. One flag was returned upon Ms. Murphy’s request, but the others could not be retrieved from the restroom waste.”

The incidents stem from a May 29 directive from IRS’ acting chief of FMSS John Pekarik instructing employees to remove “any and all NTEU materials” in IRS facilities using “whatever steps are necessary,” short of vandalism of non-union property to reach the offending decoration. The email suggested the initiative was aimed at complying with President Trump’s 2025 executive order stripping two-thirds of the federal workforce, including IRS employees, of their collective bargaining rights on national security grounds.

“IRS leadership has identified instances of NTEU flyers, posters and other paraphernalia remaining in place at IRS posts of duty,” the email stated. “Given the high-profile nature of these materials as they relate to the president’s executive order, and given IRS senior leadership’s prior directive to ensure all of these materials have been removed, I’ve been asked to ensure that recurring instances of NTEU materials in the workplace be addressed immediately.”

Neither Trump’s union executive orders nor the Office of Personnel Management’s implementing guidance make mention of scrubbing workspaces of references to the union or barring employees from displaying their support for the labor groups.

NTEU says the forward-looking prohibition on employees posting NTEU-related materials in the workplace is a classic example of prior restraint, a form of government censorship that federal courts find unconstitutional in most cases.

“In cases involving a broad ban on group speech, ‘the government must show that the interests of both potential audiences and a vast group of present and future employees in a broad range of present and future expression are outweighed by that expressions’ necessary impact on the actual operation of the government,” the union wrote. “This is an exacting standard. Here, NTEU materials remaining in common space and employee workstations at IRS facilities have no ‘impact on the actual operations of the government.’ Indeed, those types of signs and posters have been in IRS workplaces for decades.”

The lawsuit accuses IRS of what NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald called “textbook” viewpoint discrimination against union supporters at the agency, as well as violations of the First Amendment’s freedom of association.

“NTEU will not stand for the administration’s effort to retaliate against us for our advocacy and to try to erase NTEU from the workplace,” she said. “NTEU has represented IRS employees for nearly a century. It will continue to fight for their right to speak up and support the union.”

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Most Americans think government workers are competent and should be nonpartisan, according to recent surveys

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 15:40:21 -0400

Support for a nonpartisan civil service rebounded this year, according to a report released Wednesday by the Partnership for Public Service. A recently launched survey series from a Harvard research center also found that majorities of Americans view public sector employees positively.

In total, 76% of respondents in the spring Partnership survey agreed that a nonpartisan civil service is important for a strong democracy in the U.S., which is a 10% increase compared with last year. The upswing was driven by Republicans and Independents; both of whom experienced double-digit increases in support since 2025.

Still, 38% of respondents agreed that "presidents should have the right to fill any government job with people that agree with their policies.”

President Donald Trump last week formally converted around 8,000 career federal employees in “policy-related” positions to Schedule Policy/Career, which removes their civil service protections. Agency worker organizations and good government groups, including the Partnership, have criticized the new job classification and argued it will lead to hiring based on political affiliation.

The Partnership survey also found that “civil servants received the highest level of support” since the nonprofit started conducting annual polls in 2021. This year, 61% of respondents agreed that “most civil servants are committed to helping people like me” (a five-point increase since 2025) and 65% reported that “most civil servants are competent” (an eight-point increase).

These results come from a nationally representative poll of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted between March 31 and April 5.

The survey also found that 52% of Americans oppose the Trump administration’s changes to government, which is an increase from 49% in 2025. In particular, 56% of Independents this year objected to the reforms compared with 42% in 2025.

Additionally, one in three respondents said they have been, or know someone who has been, impacted by the administration’s federal funding and/or workforce cuts.

In December 2025, the Harvard People Lab launched “Perceptions of Public Servants,” a quarterly series of national representative surveys to track views of U.S. public sector workers. Its analysis, for the most part, does not distinguish between federal, state and local government employees.

Researchers reported in a June white paper that most Americans believe public sector employees are competent (68%), have integrity (57%) and express warmth (51%). Conversely, only about a quarter of respondents described such workers as innovative. These results came from a March survey.

The research center also found that, between December 2025 and March 2026, there was a roughly 9% drop in respondents reporting they were “somewhat” or “very” interested in public sector jobs, with the largest decreases among Democrats, women, late career workers and Black people.

The Trump administration has sought to excise diversity, equity and inclusion programs from the federal government.

According to the white paper, stereotypes of public sector employees are “strong, consistent predictors” of wanting a career in public service. For example, “a one standard deviation increase in how favorably respondents view public sector employees’ integrity is associated with a seven percentage point increase in career interest.”

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A year after sounding the alarm, NIH dissenters say political influence is entrenched at research agency

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:46:22 -0400

Last year, a group of National Institutes of Health employees compiled their objections to the workforce and research funding policy changes that the Trump administration was making at the agency into the “Bethesda Declaration,” which mirrored other civil servant-led documents that were released around the same time at the EPA and Federal Emergency Management Agency.

On Tuesday, 74 current and former NIH staffers, 39 of whom are named, published a one-year update to the “Bethesda Declaration,” arguing that the administration’s overhauls have led to increased political influence at the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research.

“The chaos of 2025 has been replaced with coordinated, systematic, institutionalized destruction in 2026,” they wrote.

NIH has shed more than 4,400 staffers, or about one-fifth of its workforce, since the start of 2025, according to federal employee data. The declaration signers also said that directorships at 14 of NIH’s 27 institutes are unfilled.

They expressed concerns that Schedule Policy/Career, a recently implemented directive to make it easier to fire 10,000 career federal employees in “policy-related” positions, would further hurt staffing. Specifically, the signers contended that frontline NIH workers involved in “regular scientific administrative work,” rather than policymaking, are set to be converted to the new job classification.

The NIH employees also criticized certain appointments at the agency, including Kristine Blanche — an integrative medicine practitioner and the wife of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — at an NIH advisory council and Kyle Walsh — a neuroepidemiologist and friend of Vice President JD Vance — as head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

“Positions of authority and accountability at NIH are increasingly filled by people who lack the technical knowledge or integrity to make sound decisions about the future of health research in the United States,” they wrote.

Additionally, the Partnership for Public Service nonprofit recently reported that the Trump administration has installed six political appointees at NIH as of March 2026. The historical average number of such officials at the agency between 2009 and 2024 is 0.7.

While NIH has reinstated thousands of research grants that it terminated in 2025, often because of a court order, the letter signers emphasized that more than 1,000 grants have not been restored, according to a tracker website. They further argued that the sudden nature of the cancelations hurt not just the researchers but also, in many cases, the study participants.

“Terminated studies, including clinical trials, were initially allowed no time or funding to ethically close out, safely disenroll participants or follow through on commitments to participants,” they wrote. “After months of harm, NIH finally changed policy to allow terminated studies to request costs to support an orderly study closeout. However, the damage caused by abrupt trial discontinuation and disruption was entirely foreseen by NIH staff and should never have occurred.”

The NIH employees also slammed a change to the agency’s grant review process requiring a certification that funded research does not include certain words associated with diversity, which has held up some grant disbursements and forced scientists to rewrite proposals.

“NIH leadership has justified these acts by establishing the ill-defined concept of ‘Gold Standard Science’ and then claiming that any research project that doesn’t align with the administration’s political priorities does not meet the standard,” the letter signers wrote.

Other issues flagged in the new “Bethesda Declaration” include:

A proposed rule from the Office of Management and Budget that would overhaul the federal grantmaking process, including by requiring political appointees to approve awards to ensure they advance the president’s priorities.
A 24% reduction in the number of NIH grants issued in fiscal 2025 compared with the average of the previous 10 years.
A policy that all purchasing orders more than $15,000 must go through a “lengthy, centralized process that takes so long it effectively functions as an arbitrary limit on essential laboratory tools and resources.”

A spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department said in a statement to Government Executive that agency Director Jay Bhattacharya has made “scientific integrity, open inquiry and academic freedom central priorities at NIH during the Trump administration” and met last year with the “Bethesda Declaration” organizers.

“Director Bhattacharya is committed to transparency, open inquiry and constructive debate and remains open to continuing direct conversations with the authors of the Bethesda Declaration to discuss their concerns firsthand,” the spokesperson said. “While disagreement is a healthy part of science, he believes the most productive path forward is through direct engagement and dialogue.”

The letter signers also noted that trust in NIH has decreased; a survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found that 62% of respondents in February said they have confidence in the agency compared with 75% who reported the same two years ago.

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NDA proposal for feds draws scrutiny on Capitol Hill

Erich Wagner — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:45:09 -0400

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., on Tuesday said the Trump administration’s recently unveiled plan to make federal employees sign a non-disclosure agreement “threatens” the federal workforce’s constitutional rights and creates a chilling effect on would-be whistleblowers and demanded information into how it was developed.

Last month, the Office of Personnel Management formally proposed requiring all federal employees to sign NDAs barring them from divulging “confidential” information in most cases, prompting swift outcry from civil service groups and employment lawyers. A draft copy of the document bars signatories from disclosing information related to internal agency operations, personnel and procurement matters and “any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material.”

In a letter to OPM Director Scott Kupor, the Illinois Democrat criticized the proposal as “over-broad” and likely to make it more difficult for whistleblowers to divulge allegations of waste, fraud and abuse.

“Although OPM has stated the proposal does not supersede existing whistleblower protections, rights guaranteed on paper can be rendered ineffective if employees reasonably fear discipline, civil liability or criminal penalties for exercising them,” Krishnamoorthi wrote. “As drafted, the NDA will leave federal employees questioning whether communications with Congress, inspectors general, law enforcement or other authorized oversight bodies could jeopardize or seriously damage their careers . . . Federal employees should not be forced to guess which communications are permissible and which could expose them to punishment.”

Krishnamoorthi particularly questioned OPM’s citation of “confidential” information, which he said is never “clearly defined” in the document.

“OPM itself recognizes that federal employees have the right to disclose evidence of violations of law, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority and threats to public health or safety to Congress, inspectors general, and other authorized recipients,” he wrote. “Yet the proposed NDA threatens disciplinary, civil and potentially criminal consequences for violations involving an undefined category of ‘confidential’ information. When employees cannot confidently distinguish between protected disclosures and prohibited conduct, many will understandably choose silence rather than risk punishment.”

The Democrat demanded information on OPM’s legal analysis of whether the proposed NDA comports with the First Amendment and the Whistleblower Protection Act, a definition of “confidential” for the purposes of the document, as well as any potential consequences federal employees who refuse to sign the agreement would face, and whether it would apply equally to both career employees and political appointees.

“In its draft notice, OPM also cited unauthorized disclosures to the press—including reporting on OPM’s own controversial personnel proposals—as the primary justification for this rule, arguing that leaks ‘risk chilling candid interagency feedback, disrupting orderly decision-making, and weakening trust within and among federal agencies,’” Krishnamoorthi wrote. “This proposal notably does not mention the most high-profile information disclosure of this administration—Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s sharing of operational military strike details over a Signal group chat. That omission raises a direct question about whether this policy is designed to apply consistently across all federal employees and officials—or whether it is aimed primarily at career civil servants who speak out about wrongdoing.”

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Union renews call for lawmakers to override Trump’s anti-union EO at the Pentagon

Erich Wagner — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The nation’s largest federal employee union last week urged House lawmakers to once again bar the Defense Department from implementing President Trump’s executive order stripping two-thirds of the federal workforce of its collective bargaining rights.

In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order banning unions at most federal agencies, citing a seldom-used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to exempt workforces from federal sector labor law under the auspices of national security. A second order, signed last August, added a half-dozen more agencies to the initial edict.

The measure—and its implementation—have been tied up in a myriad of court cases ever since. While efforts lawsuits challenging the initiative governmentwide have been thus far unsuccessful in halting its rollout, some unions have preserved feds’ collective bargaining rights at particular agencies, including for Defense Department employees represented by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and the Federal Education Association.

Not so for the American Federation of Government Employees, whose contracts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered terminated in April. In a letter to the top Democrat and Republican on the House Armed Services Committee last week, Daniel Horowitz, AFGE’s legislative director, urged the committee to once again approve a proposal nullifying Trump’s executive order as it pertains to Defense Department workers.

Last year, the panel voted on a bipartisan basis to include the amendment, proposed by Rep. Donald Norcross, D-N.J., in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, and the bill ultimately passed the House with the measure in tact. It did not become law, as the Senate stripped the provision from its version of the bill.

In the letter, Horowitz argued that Trump’s use of the Civil Service Reform Act’s so-called national security exemption greatly exceeded congressional intent.

“The statutory exemption Congress wrote into Title 5 was deliberately narrow, reserved for agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency whose missions are uniquely incompatible with bargaining,” he wrote. “Applying it broadly across the entire Department of Defense departs significantly from that design and longstanding precedent. It is telling that President Trump never invoked [this exemption] during his first term.”

Though Trump did not cite that authority in his first term, he sought to delegate it to then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper in 2020. Esper ultimately declined to use that power.

Horowitz noted that a group of 16 House Republicans urged members of the bicameral conference committee to keep Norcross’ amendment in the NDAA last year, arguing that the edict “jeopardizes” rather than strengthens national security. And the Pentagon already has safeguards to ensure collective bargaining activity does not interfere with national security concerns.

“Restoring collective bargaining is not about expanding rights or constraining management,” he wrote. “Existing agreements already contain robust management rights provisions, emergency authorities, and national security exemptions that allow commanders and program managers to act when mission requirements demand. What collective bargaining provides is a structured channel for identifying and resolving workforce problems before they become operational ones, including improving safety, retention, productivity and accountability.”

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Another lawsuit alleges DOJ is illegally rejecting telework requests from employees with disabilities

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 17:40:00 -0400

A group of employees with disabilities at the Executive Office of Immigration Review alleged in a lawsuit on June 3 that agency officials are categorically denying reasonable accommodation requests for telework following President Donald Trump’s directive in January 2025 mandating that federal staffers return to in-person work.

While that order ended telework and remote work flexibility for most government workers, civil servants with qualifying disabilities are exempt from its requirements. Plus, agencies are legally required to provide reasonable accommodations (e.g. flexible schedules and accessible technology) to such employees unless doing so would cause an “undue hardship.”

But staffers with disabilities alleged these rules have been flouted by officials at EOIR, a Justice Department agency that adjudicates immigration cases.

“Since late April 2025, on information and belief, the agency has granted no telework reasonable accommodations to EOIR employees, including new requests for telework reasonable accommodations and requests to renew previously approved telework reasonable accommodations,” their attorneys wrote in the filing.

One of the named plaintiffs, Kimberly Panian, said that during a May 2025 meeting to discuss her telework reasonable accommodation request an agency official told her that EOIR had not granted any such requests under the new administration.

Panian, who has worked at the agency as an attorney-advisor since 2018, has Type I diabetes and experiences migraines with stroke-like symptoms. In March 2020, she requested a full-time telework accommodation due to fears that her diabetes could expose her to more severe COVID-19 complications. While that request was approved, all EOIR staffers shortly thereafter were directed to work from home due to the pandemic.

“Ms. Panian also noted [in a 2022 accommodation renewal request] that when she has a migraine episode, she cannot manage her blood sugar, which puts her at considerable risk due to her diabetes,” according to the lawsuit. “Her request explained that she is better able to manage her symptoms from home and emphasized the danger of having a medical emergency at work due to the court’s lack of cell service and trained individuals to help her.”

But her requests for telework have been denied since the policy change, and she was ordered to return to the office by April 20, 2026. Since that date, she has used nearly 250 hours of sick and annual leave and will run out by the middle of June.

“In addition to skyrocketing blood sugar and increased migraines, Ms. Panian has been in a constant state of increased anxiety and has experienced numerous panic attacks and other mental health symptoms. Given her precarious health, the stress and anxiety create a domino effect that worsens her ability to manage her diabetes, migraines and related symptoms,” her lawyers wrote. “The medication and medical equipment on which Ms. Panian relies are incredibly expensive, and she lives in constant fear that she will have to jeopardize her life by returning to in-person work to protect her livelihood and health insurance.”

EOIR attorney-advisor Hoi Yee Baxter, the other named plaintiff, teleworked even before the COVID-19 pandemic but requested work from home as a reasonable accommodation after being diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in September 2024. That request was approved on Jan. 13, 2025.

Ultimately, however, her accommodation was revoked about a year later, and she was directed to begin working in-person by Feb. 2, 2026. Like Panian, she has relied on leave since then and is set to run out in June.

“[Baxter] has spent the time she would be working [instead] thinking about her lung cancer, stressing about losing her job and contemplating death,” according to the filing. “EOIR’s denial of her telework reasonable accommodation request has had a compounding and negative impact on her mental health. She experiences increased headaches, stress, and anxiety.”

Democracy Forward — a national legal organization that is behind many of the lawsuits against the Trump administration, which is representing the plaintiffs along with the employment law firm Burakiewicz & DePriest — argued that EOIR’s apparent telework policy violates the Rehabilitation Act’s prohibition on disability-based discrimination in federal programs.

“The Rehabilitation Act requires federal agencies to engage in an individualized, good-faith process to provide reasonable accommodations — not impose blanket bans driven by politics and ideology,” said Elena Goldstein, Democracy Forward’s legal director, in a statement. “This policy of categorically denying telework accommodations is unlawful, dangerous and fundamentally inconsistent with the federal government’s obligations under disability rights law.”

In response to a request for comment, EOIR said that it “declines to comment on litigation-related matters.”

The lawsuit cites an April 2025 EOIR email that said officials would take a “closer look” at telework reasonable accommodations because the component has “slightly more than 2% of all DOJ employees” but “is responsible for approximately 11% of all full-time telework reasonable accommodations granted department-wide.”

A separate group of DOJ employees with disabilities alleged in a recent lawsuit that officials discriminated and retaliated against them “as part of a systematic, agency-wide practice of refusing to grant requests for telework as a reasonable accommodation.” And Government Executive previously reported that Terry Jackson, a former DOJ employee with disabilities, settled with the agency after alleging that he was fired for requesting telework as a reasonable accommodation.

Many EOIR immigration judges have been removed since the start of Trump’s second term in what they allege are politically motivated mass firings.

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Trump’s edict making 8,000 feds at-will employees draws swift outcry

Erich Wagner — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 16:57:34 -0400

Organizations representing federal workers and good government advocates were quick to decry President Trump’s move this week to formally strip around 8,000 federal workers of their civil service protections, making them at-will employees, though the exact contours of the initiative’s scope remain unclear.

Wednesday’s executive order implements Schedule Policy/Career, a new job category within the excepted service -- formerly known as Schedule F -- designed for career employees in “policy-related” positions who lack the removal protections in Title 5 of the U.S. Code and of the right to appeal adverse personnel actions. Under Office of Personnel Management regulations that took effect in March, whistleblower complaints from Schedule Policy/Career employees would no longer go to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, instead being referred internally to the employing agency’s general counsel for review.

The edict tasks agencies with reclassifying the roughly 8,000 federal workers into Schedule Policy/Career within seven days -- by June 10 -- as well as set up a separate bonus pool for those workers to recognize “outstanding work.” And OPM is expected to propose new regulations setting up a new governmentwide presidential award program for the job category.

Has the return of Schedule Policy/Career affected you or your work? Reach out to Erich Wagner at ewagner@govexec.com or ewagner.47 on Signal to share your story.

A 200-page appendix accompanying the executive order lists the various positions slated for conversion, subdivided by agency and subcomponent and accompanied by position codes used on an internal basis. As such, the veracity of administration officials’ claims regarding the precise number of impacted employees, or that 97% of them occupy GS-15 or Senior Leader pay grades, remains murky.

The State Department told employees in an email Thursday that Trump placed 100 positions into Schedule Policy/Career with Wednesday’s order but did not specify how many employees would be affected.

“Employees encumbering these crucially important positions will be notified by the Bureau of Human Resources within seven work days,” the email stated. “These changes will allow the department to reward high performance and ensure that we are well equipped to promptly and effectively address poor performance and misconduct. These roles remain career positions and will continue to be filled through merit-based hiring procedures.”

The nonprofit Protect Democracy on Thursday solicited federal employees whose jobs appear in the executive order’s appendix to provide information about their position and duties to better ascertain its scope.

A Defense Department employee, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, told Government Executive that while they were not personally set for reclassification into Schedule Policy/Career, each of their supervisors are. None of them influence policy, they said.

“First line supervisors are responsible for the oversight of their employees’ projects and the successful execution of those,” the employee said. “They hire and evaluate their direct reports annually and handle execution of disciplinary actions as needed. They have ZERO authority to establish policy. All of that is dictated down to them from their senior leadership.”

Federal employee unions have filed multiple lawsuits challenging the legality of Schedule Policy/Career, filed last year but effectively held dormant until the policy was set for implementation. In statements Thursday, their leaders vowed to block it in court.

“The administration continues to focus on trying to strip federal workers of the rights that Congress gave them instead of letting them do the jobs that the American people count on them to do,” said National Treasury Employees Union National President Doreen Greenwald. “Now that the administration has officially ordered the transfer of an untold number of employees to Schedule Policy/Career—so that they are, in the administration's view, easier to fire—the litigation surrounding this initiative will resume. NTEU looks forward to aggressively pursuing that litigation and fighting to ensure the American people have their government services delivered by federal employees who were hired based on merit and skill, not partisan affiliation.”

“The practical implications of this action are clear,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees. “Workers who once felt comfortable reporting waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement at their place of employment because they were protected from retaliation will now be afraid for their jobs if they speak out. That is a disservice to them and to the millions of Americans who rely on the federal government every day.”

And while it appears those legal challenges are set to finally kick off, Stephanie Rapp-Tully, partner at federal employment law firm Tully Rinckey, PLLC, while some may try to challenge their reclassification before the Merit Systems Protection Board, it could take some time before individual employees can file litigation of their own.

“For an individual to bring an action, they have to have suffered a harm,” she said. “You could be reclassified as Schedule F and maintain your employment, never face an adverse action and retire as planned. That could be your trajectory—you don’t know. It’s not until they pursue an adverse action that someone has suffered a damage.”

A perhaps overlooked change for Schedule Policy/Career employees is the inability to respond to a proposed adverse personnel action before it takes effect.

“Agencies are not required to provide advanced notice or ally for a written reply on any disciplinary or adverse actions,” Rapp-Tully said. “[They’re] also not entitled to see the evidence against them, which is a huge component . . . and they couldn’t appeal agency decisions to the MSPB. It’s the true definition of at-will.”

NextGov/FCW reporter David DiMolfetta contributed to this report.

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Lawsuit claims DOJ is retaliating against employees with disabilities who request telework

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:50:52 -0400

A new lawsuit alleges that the Justice Department discriminated and retaliated against two of its employees with disabilities “as part of a systematic, agency-wide practice of refusing to grant requests for telework as a reasonable accommodation.”

Both employees teleworked for years in their roles as supervisory IT program managers in the Criminal Division’s Office of Administration without any adverse impacts to their work, according to the complaint. But President Donald Trump’s January 2025 return-to-office directive for the federal workforce upended that.

Joshua Mauldin, one of the plaintiffs, is a Marine and Air Force veteran who retired from the military in 2021 as a “100% permanent and total disabled veteran diagnosed with service-related post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety and several cardiac conditions.”

“Because Mauldin’s psychiatric and cardiac disabilities interact, tasks that might be routine for others, such as attending in-person meetings, working in high-traffic office areas and commuting, carry a significant and documented medical risk for him,” according to the lawsuit. “The limitations are permanent, and the severity can range from moderate interference with concentration to acute, disabling episodes that halt his ability to function until symptoms stabilize.”

Prior to the start of Trump’s second term, Mauldin was required to work in-person one day per week, which he was able to manage because the office was mostly empty due to other employees teleworking.

But offices became fuller after the end of remote work flexibility for most of the federal workforce. So, in February 2025, Mauldin requested a reasonable accommodation to telework, for the most part, at least nine out of every 10 workdays per pay period.

Officials are legally required to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified employees with disabilities, unless doing so would cause an “undue hardship” to the agency. Common examples include interpreters, flexible schedules and accessible technology.

Mauldin in April 2025 reached out to an Equal Employment Opportunity counselor to raise a complaint because his supervisor did not make a final determination on his reasonable accommodation request by a 30-day deadline. A day later, his supervisor issued an interim arrangement that enabled him to report in-person only one day per pay period.

And in July 2025, Mauldin’s supervisor approved another interim arrangement — rather than a final determination — for telework every work day “with in-office presence only when required by mission needs” as a result of an upcoming heart ablation procedure “due to a chronic cardiac condition that had worsened in recent months during a period of sustained job-related stress.”

But in November 2025, Mauldin was informed that he would lose his supervisory duties and that his position would be downgraded from a GS-14 to a GS-13 with a salary reduction. Agency officials said this was the result of a review of his job responsibilities, but attorneys in the filing countered that neither Mauldin or employees he supervised were interviewed.

“The prolonged uncertainty caused by the agency’s refusal to grant Mauldin’s requests for reasonable accommodations, combined with the stress and instability caused by his demotion despite his strong performance evaluations, caused a significant deterioration of Mauldin’s PTSD, anxiety and stress-sensitive cardiac conditions,” his attorneys wrote.

He began medical leave in December 2025.

The other plaintiff, Tarik Smajic, has lived with “chronic pain and progressive spinal limitations” since a drunk driver hit his car in 2017. Before 2025, he teleworked three days per week, but that was a result of DOJ’s policy at the time rather than a reasonable accommodation.

Following the return-to-office directive, however, Smajic requested a reasonable accommodation that would allow him to continue his work schedule of teleworking three days per week. His supervisor, who also oversaw Mauldin, criticized his request during a March meeting, according to the suit.

“When Smajic explained that the refusal to grant his RAs had resulted in increased pain and forced him to increase his pain medication dosage, [the supervisor] responded with words to the effect of, ‘It’s your body, you can choose not to take the pills,’” according to the lawsuit.

In July 2025, he requested telework every work day with “in-office presence only when required by mission needs” because new “MRI scans revealed a measurable deterioration of his condition…resulting in more persistent and debilitating symptoms.” Smajic’s supervisor denied it about a month later.

Shortly thereafter, the plaintiff said that he was put on an “informal performance improvement plan” and received lower performance scores.

Because he was required to work in-person three days per week, Smajic in September 2025 submitted a reasonable accommodation request that the agency provide him with equipment similar to what he had in his home office to relieve pain.

“Smajic reported to the office in person, usually in extreme pain, on Sept. 8, 9, 10, 16, 18, 23 and 29, 2025, and had to leave early on several of those days because of the unbearable pain,” his attorneys wrote. “Because of agonizing flareups, Smajic also took some ad hoc leave on days he had originally planned to come into the office.”

According to the filing, Smajic’s supervisor in November 2025 sent him a questionnaire for his doctor to fill out regarding a type of chair that Smajic previously said would not be effective in reducing his pain.

In December, his supervisor notified him that the agency would not provide any in-office accommodations and “instead intended to pursue involuntary reassignment as an ‘accommodation of last resort.’”

The lawsuit requests that: Mauldin and Smajic receive compensatory damages, adverse personnel actions be reversed, their telework requests be approved and DOJ stop its “systematic practice of refusing to issue final decisions granting telework as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities.”

DOJ did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Government Executive previously reported that Terry Jackson, a former DOJ employee with disabilities, settled with the agency after alleging that he was fired for requesting telework as a reasonable accommodation.

Several agencies have instituted policies more strictly scrutinizing telework and remote work reasonable accommodations, arguing that many civil servants have abused the system following Trump’s return-to-office directive. Employees with qualifying disabilities are exempt from the mandate.

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Trump signs order moving thousands of federal employees into Schedule F

Erich Wagner — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:13:06 -0400

President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order formally converting nearly 10,000 career federal workers into Schedule Policy/Career, making them effectively at-will employees.

The edict marks the culmination of a years-long push to make it easier to fire federal employees in “policy-related” jobs by removing them from the federal government’s competitive service and placing them in a new job category, initially called Schedule F and now referred to as Schedule Policy/Career. Employees placed into the new schedule would no longer be able to challenge adverse personnel actions before the Merit Systems Protection Board, and whistleblower complaints filed by Schedule F employees would be investigated by their own agency, rather than the Office of Special Counsel.

A senior administration official told reporters Wednesday that, contrary to the administration’s prior estimates that 50,000 feds would be converted to the new job category, just 8,000 jobs are targeted in Wednesday’s executive order. An OPM spokesperson said Trump chose to instead focus on "the most senior level career policy officials."

The official said the vast majority -- around 97% -- of those impacted are either GS-15s or senior leaders (SL). Jobs targeted for conversion include agency office and division heads; C-suite posts like chief information officers; regional officers and their deputies and chiefs of staff; program managers; those who help write federal regulations and attorneys involved in crafting agency or internal policies, as well as advisors, senior HR officials and grantmaking posts.

Schedule F was first proposed via executive order in October 2020, but following Trump’s electoral defeat the following month, officials failed to implement the measure prior to former President Biden’s inauguration. Biden rescinded the edict, and in 2024 the Office of Personnel Management issued new regulations to make it more difficult for a future president to revive the idea.

Though early in Trump’s second term, officials suggested the president could simply “nullify” regulations, OPM ultimately followed the notice-and-comment process to propose new regulations to unwind the Biden-era protections and implement the newly-renamed Schedule Policy/Career. OPM’s final rule implementing the new job category took effect in March.

The policy remains the subject of multiple lawsuits by federal employee unions, who have accused the administration of violating the Constitution, the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act and the Administrative Procedures Act. And good government groups have warned that at-will employment of public employees on the state level have produced mixed results in terms of productivity, while increasing reports of political and personal favoritism in the workplace.

Scott Kupor and another official said Wednesday that contrary to opponents’ warnings that the measure would give rise to a new spoils system in federal employment, there won’t be political litmus tests for employees in Schedule Policy/Career and the traditional hiring process for competitive service positions will be retained in the new job category. Unmentioned, however, was OPM’s decision last year to institute new politicized essay questions as part of the federal hiring process.

“In order to effect the president’s policy priorities, we need people in these senior positions willing and capable of carrying out those directives,” Kupor said. “All this does is basically say: it doesn’t matter what your political views are–and you can have any political views–but if you allow them to interfere in your willingness to carry out lawful orders and directives, this is a mechanism for you to be removed, effectively at-will . . . There are zero loyalty tests in this.”

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Federal oversight faces ‘structural conflict’ as political appointees enter IG offices

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 16:16:27 -0400

Along with increasing the number of political appointees in the federal government, the second Trump administration is also installing such officials at agencies that haven’t employed political staffers in recent history.

According to a report published on May 28 by the Partnership for Public Service nonprofit, there are 16 agencies and subagencies that had zero non-Senate-confirmed appointees between 2009 and 2024 that had at least one as of March 2026.

Some of the agencies include the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Forest Service, National Archives and the IRS, which has never before had non-Senate-confirmed political appointees.

“These trends reveal that the politicization of federal leadership is not simply intensifying — it is spreading,” wrote Partnership researcher Chris Piper. “In each case, political appointees are displacing or crowding out career officials whose expertise, continuity and institutional knowledge have been the foundation of effective agency operations and mission delivery.”

In particular, the Partnership flagged that there are two political appointees assigned respectively to the inspector general offices for the departments of Housing and Urban Development and Labor.

OIGs provide independent oversight of agency operations. Since at least 2009, according to the report, no other OIG had any non-Senate-confirmed political staffers.

“[OIG] credibility depends on operating free from the direction of the very officials they oversee,” Piper wrote. “A political appointee within an IG office, outside of the Senate-confirmed inspector general, does not merely break a historical norm — it introduces a structural conflict of interest into an institution whose effectiveness depends on independence.”

Good government groups have criticized the president for firing many IGs and replacing most of them with individuals who worked in the first or second Trump administration. The IG for the Labor Department — Anthony D’Esposito, a former GOP congressman — has also faced questions about actions he has taken while in the watchdog position seemingly to prepare for another political campaign, which could have violated ethics rules.

There also are political appointees for the first time at the Federal Labor Relations Authority and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Both are examples of independent agencies that were created to have some degree of separation from the White House, but the Trump administration has sought to exert more influence over their operations.

The Partnership also emphasized that non-Senate-confirmed appointees have been assigned in “unprecedented numbers” to management offices, such as the Veterans Affairs Department Information and Technology Office and the Federal Acquisition Service under the General Services Administration.

“[U]nlike the career officials they displace, political appointees are unlikely to serve long enough to witness the consequences of the budget decisions they make, the technology investments they oversee or the procurement contracts they negotiate,” Piper wrote. “Political appointments in management functions also raise concerns about undue influence over decisions that should be made on the merits — including the awarding of contracts and the allocation of federal resources in ways that serve political rather than programmatic ends.”

The Partnership also complained that officials generally don’t have to disclose the specific work that non-Senate-confirmed appointees are performing.

“This lack of transparency is not unique to this administration. But it is more consequential when political appointments are reaching new corners of the federal government,” Piper wrote. “This administration has expanded political appointments into agencies and offices where they have not existed in at least 15 years. As a result, appointees are performing functions for which no clear policy-directing rationale applies and where the consequences of politicization may be slow to emerge and difficult to trace.”

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

Earlier this year, the Trump administration finalized regulations for Schedule Policy/Career, a new job classification that would remove civil service job protections for as many as 50,000 government workers in “policy-related” positions. Critics argue that it will result in political appointees replacing career staffers while administration officials have insisted that federal employees will not be removed based on their political affiliations.

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Federal employee NDAs aren’t new, but expanding them requires careful guardrails

Lindy Kyzer — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:01:10 -0400

The recent proposal from the Office of Personnel Management to expand nondisclosure agreement (NDA) requirements across the federal workforce has generated predictable controversy. Critics see it as an attempt to suppress dissent. Supporters view it as a long-overdue effort to curb damaging leaks.

But amid the political debate, one important fact is being overlooked: for hundreds of thousands of federal employees, NDAs are already a standard condition of service.

Anyone granted access to classified information signs the Standard Form 312 (SF-312), a legally binding nondisclosure agreement acknowledging their responsibility to protect national security information. Clearance holders understand that safeguarding sensitive information is part of the job. The expectation is clear, the boundaries are defined, and the consequences for violations are understood.

What makes the current proposal different is not the existence of an NDA. It is the expansion of the concept beyond classified information and into a much broader category of what the administration calls “confidential government information.”

That distinction matters, and it mirrors the already expanding government ecosystem of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), and the ongoing confusion about how to protect it.

Government agencies routinely handle information that is not classified but still sensitive. Procurement strategies, internal personnel matters, pre-decisional policy discussions, cybersecurity vulnerabilities, law enforcement operations, and draft regulations can all be compromised by unauthorized disclosures. Few federal executives would argue that every internal deliberation should immediately become public.

NDAs also certainly aren’t only the purview of the federal government. Many private-sector organizations require employees to sign confidentiality agreements covering proprietary business information. OPM Director Scott Kupor has pointed to this reality in defending the proposal, arguing that the federal government should not hold itself to a lower standard than private employers when it comes to protecting sensitive information.

From a management perspective, that argument has merit.

Federal agencies cannot effectively develop policy, negotiate contracts, conduct investigations, or plan operations if internal deliberations are routinely leaked before decisions are finalized. Public trust can be damaged not only by secrecy but also by incomplete information released without context.

Yet government is not the private sector. The federal workforce serves the public interest, not shareholders. That distinction requires a different balance between confidentiality and accountability.

The challenge is not whether federal employees should protect sensitive information. They already do. The challenge is defining exactly what information falls within the scope of protection. Confusion about that scope is where an NDA can extend beyond just protecting sensitive information and can become a weapon to unfairly penalize a federal employee, or incorrectly hide information that has no reason to be deemed protected.

Current draft language references “confidential government information,” including pre-decisional and deliberative materials that are not publicly available. Critics argue the definition is too broad and could create uncertainty for employees trying to distinguish between legitimate whistleblowing and prohibited disclosure.

Federal leaders should take those concerns seriously.

The federal government already operates under a complex framework of classification rules, privacy protections, procurement integrity requirements, and whistleblower laws. Any government-wide NDA policy should reinforce and not undermine that framework. Employees must have confidence that legally protected disclosures to inspectors general, Congress, and authorized oversight bodies remain fully protected. The proposal itself states that those rights would be preserved, but implementation details will ultimately determine whether employees trust that assurance.

The experience of the cleared workforce offers a useful lesson. Security clearance holders generally accept strict disclosure restrictions because the rules are accompanied by training, clearly defined categories of protected information, and established adjudication processes. The system is far from perfect, but employees understand where the lines are drawn.

If the administration moves forward with a broader NDA framework, it should adopt the same principles: clarity, consistency, transparency, and robust protection for lawful disclosures.

A poorly defined NDA regime could create confusion, chill legitimate reporting of misconduct, and generate unnecessary legal challenges. A carefully structured one could reinforce existing obligations and help agencies better protect sensitive information without compromising accountability.

The debate should not be framed as a choice between secrecy and transparency. Federal agencies require both. Effective government depends on candid internal deliberation, but it also depends on public trust and lawful oversight.

For federal executives, the real question is not whether nondisclosure agreements belong in government. They already do. The question is whether a government-wide expansion can be implemented in a way that protects sensitive information while preserving the accountability mechanisms that distinguish public service from private employment. That is where the conversation should be focused.

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OPM moves to allow agencies to promote workers faster

Erich Wagner — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:06:02 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management this week announced plans to remove a nearly 80-year-old rule requiring federal workers to serve for at least one year in their jobs before they may be considered for promotion.

Time-in-grade requirements, which have been in place since 1950, institute a 52-week waiting period when feds must work in their current positions before they can be promoted. The law that required such a waiting period expired in 1978.

In proposed regulations published in the Federal Register Thursday, OPM said time-in-grade requirements were an “outdated” effort to avoid rapid position inflation at federal agencies, as occurred during World War II, during the Korean War.

Officials wrote that the measure is no longer needed, in part thanks to the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act and subsequent promulgation of the merit systems principles undergirding federal employment. Previous efforts to remove time-in-grade requirements occurred during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations but were unsuccessful.

“When the Whitten Amendment [mandating the one-year waiting period] was first enacted, no effective means existed to prevent employees from advancing quickly through GS grade levels,” OPM wrote. “Today, governmentwide qualification standards, established by OPM, are in place for competitive service GS positions . . . Consistent with the federal shift toward skills-based hiring, OPM is providing agencies with greater control for determining whether an employee has the skillsets needed for promotion to the next higher grade level.”

And OPM argued that it was unfair to continue to mandate time-in-grade requirements for some federal workers but not others. While the waiting period currently applies to General Schedule employees at GS-5 level and above, it does not apply to blue-collar feds hired under the Federal Wage System or to excepted service workers.

“Eliminating TIG enables any federal competitive service GS employee (regardless of current occupation or grade), who meets the qualification standards for a particular position, to become eligible for promotion to a competitive service GS position,” the agency wrote. “Thus, promotions will have a more skills-based focus without TIG.”

In a statement Thursday, OPM Director Scott Kupor said eliminating time-in-grade requirements will enable agencies to better reward top employees and compete with private sector employers for talent.

“Federal employees should be rewarded for what they can do, not how long they have waited,” Kupor said. “This proposed rule strengthens merit, gives managers more flexibility to recognize high performers, and helps agencies move talented people into mission critical roles faster.”

Comments on OPM’s proposal are open until July 27.

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Supreme Court rejects lower court bid to review immigration judge gag order

Erich Wagner — Wed, 27 May 2026 15:15:31 -0400

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeals court’s effort to investigate whether the Trump administration has effectively neutered the law undergirding the federal civil service on procedural grounds.

Last year, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit revived a 2020 lawsuit filed by the National Association of Immigration Judges challenging a policy barring its members from speaking or writing publicly about immigration in their personal capacities.

The union alleged that the so-called “gag rule,” first issued in 2017, made more restrictive in 2020 and revised again in 2021, violated the judges’ free speech rights. But a district court judge dismissed the case in 2023, finding that they must first challenge the policy before the Merit Systems Protection Board.

But last year, the Fourth Circuit panel issued a ruling that revived the case, instructing the lower court to examine whether the Trump administration’s push to fire political leaders at independent agencies like the MSPB and U.S. Office of Special Counsel had “so undermined” the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act as to deny federal workers meaningful review of agency actions.

Both the Trump administration and the immigration judges’ union asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the case. In a ruling Tuesday, the court reversed the appellate judges’ decision and sent the case back to them for further proceedings.

In an unsigned opinion, the court found that the Fourth Circuit could not issue its decision questioning the CSRA’s continued viability because neither party raised it as an argument before the judges. There were no noted dissents.

“As [NAIJ] conceded below, our precedent establishes that Congress, through the CSRA, intended to channel covered claims to the MSPB,” the justices wrote. “The parties thus confined their arguments to the narrow question whether respondent’s claims were, in fact, covered. Unsatisfied with rejecting respondent’s arguments on that question, however, the Fourth Circuit sua sponte addressed a much broader one and remanded for further proceedings on that question.”

Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett issued a concurring opinion stating that they would have also decided the case in favor of the Trump administration on the merits, as well.

“Neither the president’s view that he can remove federal executive officials, nor his having done so, change the meaning of the statute or the binding nature of this court’s interpretation of it,” they wrote. “’Conditions may have changed, but the statute has not.’ Courts may not ‘rewrite the statutory scheme in order to approximate what we think Congress might have wanted had it known that’ the president or courts may conclude that its removal restrictions were ‘beyond its authority.’”

In a statement Tuesday, NAIJ President Holly D’Andrea said that while her union was disappointed in the decision, it would continue to fight the Justice Department’s gag rule as the litigation moves forward.

“The case has been remanded to the Fourth Circuit, and NAIJ will continue fighting to protect the free speech rights of immigration judges, to seek meaningful review of the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s speech policies, and to ensure that immigration judges may engage in public discourse on immigration matters in their personal capacities,” she said. “Justice cannot endure when judges are intimidated into silence, nor can a nation remain free when the rule of law is subordinate to the whims of political ambition.”

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