Government Executive - Workforce

Nuclear waste oversight at risk as staffing vacancies mount, watchdog warns

Eric Katz — Tue, 19 May 2026 18:27:25 -0400

Updated May 20 at 9:10 a.m.

Nearly half of the positions in the federal government’s office responsible for handling and cleaning up nuclear waste are currently vacant, according to a new audit, after the Trump administration incentivized a wave of departures at the agency.

The Energy Department’s Environmental Management office lost around one-third of its employees in fiscal 2025, the Government Accountability Office found in a new report, most of whom left as part of the “deferred resignation program” that allowed employees to sit on paid leave for several months before exiting government. It already maintained a vacancy rate of 20% in 2023, GAO said. About half of the nuclear waste office’s unfilled positions were in mission-critical roles.

In a separate report in 2024, GAO found Environmental Management faced challenges in cleaning up nuclear waste due to understaffing, as it forced schedule delays, cost overruns and workplace accidents. At its 15 clean up sites, the Energy office is tasked with deactivating contaminated buildings, remediating contaminated soil and operating facilities that treat millions of gallons of liquid radioactive waste.

At its location in the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the office has a vacancy rate of 62%. The rate was among the lowest of any EM facility at its headquarters, where it was still 39%. Over the last 10 years, the office’s low point in staffing was in 2024 at 1,279, or more than 30% than its current level.

Each of EM’s six mission-critical occupation groups experienced a decrease, including nuclear engineering, general engineering and general physical science. Positions for facilities representatives, who provide the office’s “on-site presence for safety and compliance purposes” including worker health, are 44% vacant. All of the positions at the Carlsbad Field Office are vacant, while Los Alamos has just one remaining.

“This understaffing includes shortages in mission-critical occupations that are integral to carrying out EM’s mission, which includes addressing contaminated buildings, soil, and groundwater, and treating radioactive waste,” GAO said.

Energy officials told GAO the nuclear clean up office is currently reorganizing and reassessing its staffing needs. It is planning to hire 174 workers in fiscal 2026, they said, and it is not planning any changes to its responsibilities. Such hiring would still leave the office with 19% fewer employees than it had when President Trump took office last year, as well as with a 33% vacancy rate in the office according to its own previously assessed needs.

The officials suggested EM may eliminate some vacant positions and that could reduce the vacancy rate, GAO said. Some of the planned hiring, however, will come from transfers within Energy, potentially creating more vacancies elsewhere. The officials added that it will take at least a year to train many of the new hires.

"The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management remains fully equipped with the expertise necessary to carry out mission-critical projects, including with regards to addressing contaminated buildings, soil, and groundwater, and treating radioactive waste,” a spokesperson said. “Thanks to President Trump, the Energy Department’s Environmental Management Office is advancing common sense solutions that protect public health and safety, fulfill cleanup responsibilities, and deliver greater value for the American taxpayer.”

Employees within the office told GAO the vacancies are taking a toll.

“According to EM officials, leaving these positions vacant means there are fewer people to manage the workload, resulting in employees potentially burning out with heavy workloads, which gives them concern over the safety of operations,” GAO said.

The officials added that the office “was not hiring any entry-level people and was losing knowledge at a rapid rate as employees continue to retire and resign.”

This story has been updated with comment from the Energy Department.

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EEOC says government must pay damages to some employees subject to Biden's vaccine mandate

Eric Katz — Mon, 18 May 2026 15:08:22 -0400

The Biden administration unlawfully discriminated against some Interior Department employees who were denied religious exemptions to the now-defunct COVID-19 vaccine mandate, an oversight body ruled on Monday, saying the workers will be entitled to monetary compensation.

The administration’s denial of three Bureau of Indian Education employees seeking religious accommodations to get out of the mandate then-President Biden put in place for federal workers in 2021 violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said in its ruling. Interior said at the time accommodating the employees would cause undue hardship on the agency and create unsafe working conditions for their colleagues, but EEOC ruled the agency failed to prove those claims.

“No one is above the law, especially the federal government entrusted to enforce it,” said said EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, adding Monday’s decision “is a step toward justice for federal employees who suffered under the pandemic-era policies of the Biden Administration.”

Biden issued the mandate to some controversy, particularly as it allowed for agencies to discipline or fire workers who failed to comply with it. The order was eventually paused by various legal challenges and later revoked altogether, but not before 93% of the workforce got vaccinated and another 5% successfully sought a religious or medical exemption.

The Biden administration ultimately disciplined few employees for failing to comply with its mandate. Some agencies accepted anyone’s request for a religious accommodation without seeking further follow ups, though Interior, EEOC found, took a more nuanced approach.

After giving the employees a temporary pass on the mandate, religious exemption seekers went before a panel of Interior officials who sought to affirm the employees’ religious sincerity. It found the use of fetal cell lines in the initial development of the vaccine conflicted with certain employees’ religious beliefs, but said accommodating them would create intolerable risk and cost the agency up to $10,000 per unvaccinated employee per year to provide adequate masks and tests.

The employees who brought their case to EEOC still declined to get the vaccine, though they never faced any resulting disciplinary action. In its internal review of their complaint, Interior determined the employees were not entitled to any relief because they never faced any consequences. EEOC disagreed, arguing they suffered "redressable injuries" that were not alleviated by the "fortuitous intervention" but various federal courts.

The commission also noted it had to consider the case under a new precedent. The 2023 Supreme Court case Groff v. DeJoy affirmed that federal agencies — and all employers — must allow staff to practice their religion to the greatest extent possible unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on business operations. In this case, EEOC said, Interior should have implemented an alternative that allowed it to keep employees safe while still accommodating staff with religious objections to the vaccine.

“Testing and masking ostensibly effect similar safety goals as vaccination,” EEOC said.

It added the department’s complaint of the cost of masks and tests were unfounded as Congress authorized funding for explicitly that purpose.

EEOC instructed Interior to take the next four months to conduct a new review and determine what damages the impacted employees are owed, and to make those payments within the subsequent two months. The department must also train relevant management officials on the Civil Rights Act and create a new process for granting religious accommodations.

“The government clearly fell short of its obligation under the law,” said Lucas, who Trump first appointed as a commissioner in 2020 and made chair in 2025. “Under my leadership, the EEOC is committed to pursuing accountability, ensuring compliance, and securing justice for all workers, in both the private and public sector.”

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'Going to be a s***show': Parks, Interior struggle to hire temporary staff ahead of busy season

Eric Katz — Thu, 14 May 2026 13:01:50 -0400

The Interior Department is struggling to keep up with even the diminished pace of hiring for its busy season it experienced last year, according to several officials and internal documents, raising concerns about its capacity to handle the upcoming surge in both park visitors and wildfires.

Interior had around 4,200 seasonal employees on board as of early April, according to internal figures obtained by Government Executive, a 1% decrease from the same period in 2025 and down around 14% from the same period in 2024. As of late March, Interior was tracking 7% behind its 2025 seasonal hiring figures.

The department brings on temporary staff each year to handle the surge of tourists who visit National Parks, as well as federal monuments, historical sites, wildlife refuges and other federal lands, as well as to support the response to wildfire season. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said last year the National Park Service alone would hire 7,700 seasonal staff—in part to offset dramatic decreases in the agency’s permanent workforce—but internal data show the agency peaked at around 5,150 temporary workers, or 33% short of its target.

Interior has shed around 11,000 permanent employees, or 17% of its workforce, since January 2025, while NPS has reduced its rolls by around 4,000 workers, or 22%. It last month offered another incentive for a large swath of its workforce to leave the department.

While seasonal hiring typically ramps up significantly in May and June, the department has already fallen behind last year’s pace and employees say it no longer has the infrastructure to execute widespread onboarding as quickly as it typically does. Interior has lost around 18% of its human resources staff, which several current and former employees said has diminished its capacity to move seasonal hires through the system. The department lost more than 100 additional HR personnel during last month’s “deferred resignation” offer, according to multiple employees.

“We don’t have the staff to hire, do backgrounds or even onboard,” one Interior HR official said.

Internal messages from Interior’s central HR office, obtained by Government Executive, made clear the capacity issues. One such email told staff to expect delays for any hire submitted less than two full pay periods before the requested start date due to processing difficulties, including with security clearances. Some hires with offers in hand are having their onboardings pushed into June, a slower turnaround than the seasonal staff typically experience.

“Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work through these backlogs,” the email read.

Another message implored staff to stop seeking updates on hired individuals as it was further slowing down the process.

“We understand that parks are eager to onboard their seasonal staff and recognize the importance of getting teams in place quickly,” the email read. “Please know that both the personnel security team and our processing team are committed to supporting this effort and are working as quickly as possible to facilitate the onboarding process.”

Multiple employees also said recruiting has dried up due to a more negative perception of working for the department and the government in general. They cited the staff reduction efforts—particularly those focused on new hires at the beginning of President Trump’s second term—budget cuts and a snafu in paying seasonal staff during last year’s shutdown as a deterrent to potential applicants.

“We are also struggling to fill the funded seasonal vacancies we do have,” an HR staffer said. “People just don’t want to work for the government after seeing everything that happened last year.”

The first official noted the new questions on most federal job applications asking potential hires to opine on their preferred Trump administration policies has also discouraged individuals from seeking the jobs.

“The political questions gross out a lot of applicants, so we aren’t even getting many,” the official said.

Despite the setbacks, Burgum told the House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday that Interior was on schedule for its seasonal hire. He added NPS had hired “thousands and thousands” of employees and that figure would grow if Congress reauthorizes the Great American Outdoors Act Trump originally signed into law in 2020.

“We’re staffing up,” Burgum said. “And hiring is going really well this year across parks and across wildland fire.”

Interior employees took issue with that characterization, with one official simply responding “LOL.” The employees noted they expect a particularly busy summer this year as the nation celebrates its 250th birthday.

“It’s going to be a s***show,” one of the HR officials said.

In a statement, an Interior spokesperson focused only on wildland firefighting personnel and said it would meet the same level of hires — around 5,700 — this year as it brought on in 2025. It also castigated its employees for leaking information to the press instead of focusing on their other responsibilities.

"At a time when communities are preparing for wildfire season, the priority should be operational readiness and mission execution, not anonymous political sniping," the spokesperson said. "Americans expect wildland fire personnel to be focused on readiness and response, not internal political distractions."

Other employees noted the significant reductions in permanent staff have made it nearly impossible for even a robust seasonal hiring spree to fill the gaps. An employee based in a National Park in the Intermountain Region said his park is down to one permanent custodian, has no rangers to oversee trails and roads, various chief positions are vacant and half of maintenance roles are unfilled.

“[We are] quite literally fucked,” the employee said. “We were unable to hire as many seasonals as there were positions.”

Interior has shifted thousands of employees working in functions like IT, contracting and HR away from individual bureaus like NPS to instead consolidate them within Burgum’s office. It is also moving firefighters out of the bureaus and into a newly stood up U.S. Wildland Fire Service. That new agency is gearing up for peak fire season in the coming months, though a reduction in the number of seasonal hires could lead to a diminished cadre of staff with “red cards.” Those employees hold certifications for firefighting duties and deploy as needed to wildfires.

Jayson O’Neill, a spokesperson for Save Our Parks, said seasonal staff who typically help visitors staying at campground check in and assist people looking to hike backcountry areas get permits are not present to fulfill those duties. He added that rangers are being deployed to collect entrance fees, filling what would normally be a seasonal job.

“That means that ranger is not out there when they are needed,” O’Neill said. “Rangers aren’t able to protect people because they’re not there.”

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‘Sermonizing’ Easter email prompts USDA employees to sue agency

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 13 May 2026 16:06:02 -0400

A group of Agriculture Department workers and the National Federation of Federal Employees union on Wednesday filed a lawsuit over an email to the agency’s workforce celebrating the Easter holiday sent by Secretary Brooke Rollins.

Specifically, the plaintiffs objected to language in the communication that assumes the recipient is Christian such as: “Today we celebrate the greatest story ever told, the foundation of our faith, and the abiding hope of all mankind.”

“We work for the federal government, not a church. I just want to go to work and make my country better — I shouldn’t have to suffer through sermons and other religious messages forced upon me by the head of a federal agency,” said plaintiff Ethan Roberts, an atheist and Agricultural Research Service employee based out of Illinois, in a press release statement. “When the secretary sends an email, I have to read it. And when those emails are telling me what to believe, they make me feel unwelcome in an agency I’ve dedicated ten years to.”

The lawsuit asks the courts to bar department officials from “continuing to send or otherwise communicate proselytizing Christian messages to USDA employees,” arguing that Rollins violated the First Amendment.

“Secretary Rollins’s practice and policy of subjecting agency employees to proselytizing messages conveys the expectation that USDA employees share in the secretary’s religious beliefs, even when doing so would betray an employee’s own beliefs,” the attorneys wrote. “It is exactly the sort of government-sponsored religious coercion, religious sermonizing and denominational preference that the Establishment Clause prohibits.”

The lawsuit notes that Rollins, at the start of her tenure, referenced God in agencywide emails in a non-denominational manner (e.g. May God continue to protect the United States of America and may His favor shine over all her land) and that the secretary has never sent any messages acknowledging non-Christian religious holidays.

Plaintiffs are represented by the Americans United for Separation of Church and State not-for-profit, Democracy Forward legal organization and Bryan Schwartz Law.

In response to the lawsuit, a USDA spokesperson said in a statement to Government Executive that: “While we do not comment on pending litigation, we will keep the plaintiffs in our prayers during this process.”

The Office of Personnel Management in 2025 issued guidance reiterating that federal employees can seek to "persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views” so long as they are “not harassing in nature.”

USDA is in the process of a reorganization that will relocate many employees away from the Washington, D.C., area.

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House GOP probes agency settlements with federal workers

Erich Wagner — Wed, 13 May 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Monday announced they would investigate the rate at which federal agencies settle cases involving allegations of prohibited personnel practices, implying they go easy on poor performing or misbehaving federal workers.

In a letter to Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor, Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., requested data on federal employment cases heard before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which investigates allegations of workplace discrimination, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which oversees union issues, the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistleblower retaliation and Hatch Act allegations, and the Merit Systems Protection Board.

Comer argued that agencies’ success in defending employment actions before the MSPB is incongruous with their high acceptance of settlement agreements and suggested payouts stemming from those settlements are a waste of taxpayer money.

“In adverse action cases that are not dismissed at the MSPB, agencies opt to settle 68% of the time,” Comer wrote. “Among cases that proceed to decision, more than 80% of agency adverse action decisions are upheld, suggesting that agencies are frequently and inexplicably settling cases with taxpayer dollars that they would otherwise win. This raises the question of whether cases are being settled despite a high likelihood of government success on the merits, and, if so, whether systemic incentives are driving outcomes that prioritize short-term expediency over long-term accountability and savings for taxpayers.”

But Michael Fallings, managing partner at federal employment law firm Tully Rinckey, PLLC, said agency attorneys conduct the same analysis as private sector employers—and litigants in other court settings—when determining whether to settle a case.

“People and agencies settle for a multitude of reasons, but mainly: each side wants to prevent liability,” he said. “The government wants to avoid losing and having to perhaps pay even more money [than they would have under a settlement], and in each case it does an analysis of whether there is liability. And it’s the same for the employee: they don’t want to lose the case and be left with nothing. It’s a risk assessment, and it’s not just used in employment law.”

And if agencies were to abandon settlements and take every adverse action appeal before the MSPB or other adjudicatory body, the cost to taxpayers would increase, not decrease, he said.

“If there was an executive order or what-not preventing settlements of any MSPB appeals or similar cases, you’d see a much bigger expense utilized by the federal government in defending these claims,” Fallings said. “You’d have to pay to pull people out of their normal jobs to go to hearings, you’d have to produce all kinds of documents in a discovery process, and you have to pay the attorneys representing the agency. You’d easily expend as much, if not more, by trying to prevent a settlement from happening.”

Comer also argued that extensive use of settlements could serve to mask systemic issues of favoritism or other management malfeasance in cases where employees’ appeals were justified.

“While settlement may promote administrative efficiency, excessive reliance on it carries real costs: it forecloses the development of beneficial legal precedent, masks patterns of prohibited personnel practices, and allows agencies to manage recurring legal liability without addressing the underlying misconduct,” he wrote. “Congress cannot exercise meaningful oversight of the federal workforce when a supermajority of disputes are resolved through opaque, non-public agreements.”

But Fallings said that doesn’t reflect the reality of settlement talks, which still usually require the agency rectify any underlying misbehavior.

“Settlements don’t just involve money,” he said. “If the claim or appeal involves a prohibited personnel practice, that mostly likely will be discussed and be resolved as part of the settlement. A settlement can’t make everything go away, but in my experience, if an agency’s counsel is aware of a PPP happening, they are taking action to remedy that.”

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A USDA cow scientist won an award for helping dairy farmers produce more milk. He’s worried about the future of government research under Trump

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 08 May 2026 16:17:14 -0400

Paul VanRaden grew up on a dairy farm, and his first job was to collect data about cows and send it to the federal government.

Over his 37-year career at the Agriculture Department, he analyzed data that farmers provided to researchers, just like he did as a teenager, in order to determine which of their cows had the best genetics to maximize milk production.

“My first and really only job for my entire career was analyzing the data for USDA that I had started collecting when I was 16,” VanRaden said.

The federal scientist was one of several civil servants who received this year’s Service to America medal from the Partnership for Public Service nonprofit. Winners were honored during a ceremony on Wednesday at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian; although, VanRaden opted not to attend, in part, so he could reduce his carbon footprint by not flying.

He, along with two of his USDA colleagues, was recognized for making the U.S. “more prosperous.” The other categories were safer, stronger and healthier.

During his time in government, VanRaden developed a genomic prediction methodology that has enabled farmers to better identify genetically superior calves for breeding. His research contributed to an increase in milk production since the 1980s despite a decrease in the number of dairy cows.

He said that federal data on U.S. cows is sought after by other countries.

“The whole world is using this technology driven by the data that USDA created over a century,” VanRaden said. “Well, the farmers created it, but USDA collected it into one giant database.”

In 2025, VanRaden left government under a planned retirement. He lamented, however, that many of the individuals who he trained to replace him either separated from the agency due to the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the civil service or are subject to relocation orders because of USDA’s push to move employees out of the Washington, D.C., area.

The Partnership this year honored fewer civil servants than usual for the Service to America program, which celebrated its 25th anniversary. Max Stier, the president and CEO of the organization, said that was largely because government officials did not express “the typical energy to recognize and celebrate federal employees’ achievements.”

“Agencies that typically submit dozens of nominations this year submitted none,” he said in a statement to Government Executive. “We felt that even though we could not identify as many honorees as in past years, it was important to show that dedicated federal employees are still doing important and impactful work in these challenging circumstances.”

There were approximately 140 nominees this year from 39 agencies. In comparison, there were more than 350 nominations across 65 agencies for the 2025 program. The Partnership for 2026 also removed a requirement that nominees be current federal employees when they are nominated.

VanRaden, likewise, argued that the Trump administration does not value public service.

“During 36 of my 37 years [at USDA] — who was in charge, which party was in charge of the government — really had no bearing on what we did. It was math and data analysis. Everybody seemed to understand that the taxpayers, by funding research, led to big, important breakthroughs. That’s what makes this country great,” he said. “The attitude now is that the government can't do anything, and only the billionaires and the private business — that's where all the glory is. But it wasn't that way for all the previous decades. People understood that paying taxes and getting free research back was a tremendous investment. I don't understand why they gave up on that idea.

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Feds wary of skills-based hiring survey after 15 months of attacks

Erich Wagner — Fri, 08 May 2026 13:51:44 -0400

Some federal workers this week have expressed reluctance to participate in the Office of Personnel Management’s latest phase of a long-running bipartisan initiative, something experts say could mark an unintended consequence of the Trump administration’s campaign against federal workers it perceives as disloyal.

This week, OPM deployed its federal workforce competency initiative survey to roughly 550,000 employees. The questionnaire, which has previously been fielded both in 2021 and 2024, queries feds about the skillsets needed to perform their jobs, a key piece in the ongoing effort to shift away from degree- and qualification-based jobseeker evaluations and toward skills-based hiring, long a priority of both Republican and Democratic administrations.

But concern about the survey and fears of an ulterior motive quickly surfaced among feds. Multiple threads on Reddit asked what the survey was, and some wrote that they feared their responses would be used in furtherance of future reductions in force.

One Commerce Department employee told Government Executive that they received the survey invitation despite a lack of prior communication or education by their HR office. They said the administration’s co-opting of terms like “merit” and “accountability” as part of its messaging on federal layoffs and purging of diversity-related government offices has bred suspicion across the workforce.

"We all want more efficient government hiring and development, but ‘efficiency’ was cited as the justification for all of last year's senseless workforce actions,” they said. “It kind of feels like they burned the trust needed to get information from us because we don't know if it'll be a genuine attempt to improve civil service, or the first step in new automation and AI-dependent layoffs that will further degrade current capacity.”

An OPM spokesperson said Thursday that since deploying the survey this week, the agency has received 21,000 responses, a figure they expect to swell over time. The official sought to reassure feds that information collected will be used solely as part of the skills-based hiring push.

“OPM is continuing to work with agency HR offices to reinforce outreach and ensure employees understand the survey’s purpose,” they said. “This long-standing, bipartisan effort is focused solely on understanding the work federal employees perform, not evaluating individuals, and the data directly inform skills-based hiring, job design and workforce development. OPM is committed to transparency and building trust by clearly communicating how feedback I used and ensuring employees see how their input strengthens the federal workforce.”

Don Kettl, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and former dean of its School of Public Policy, said the incident shows the downsides of the Trump administration’s adversarial stance toward its employees.

“Once the idea of merit becomes perceived as a code word for slashing federal jobs and the idea of accountability becomes a code word for engaging in purges according to the ideology of employees, the principles that have been there in the federal government’s human capital world for 140 years are now being distorted by the mixed messages coming out of the administration,” he said. “So someone can say, ‘We’re interested in merit, in building capacity and making the workforce more accountable,’ and on one hand that sounds right and in many cases is right. But from the point of view of the employees, it just sounds like a continuation of those threats. Oftentimes, the only sensible strategy then is not to do anything, so as to avoid sticking your head up.”

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‘Highly problematic for a thousand reasons’: NIH employees criticize Trump-era requirement to scrutinize grants with words related to diversity

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 07 May 2026 13:56:40 -0400

As the Trump administration continues its effort to root out federal funding for diversity initiatives, the National Institutes of Health has modified its grant review process to identify research that contains words associated with race or gender, which has held up some grant disbursements and forced scientists to rewrite proposals.

“I feel that this kind of censorship is making the path forward to support narrower and narrower research only to include, for example, white, straight, cisgender men,” said a program director at one of NIH’s institutes. “Any other population is being scrutinized, which is highly, highly, highly problematic for a thousand reasons. I don't want to be an instrument of an organization that is discriminating against people based on their demographics. That is 100% wrong, and I'm being forced to do that.”

The program director, who preferred to be unnamed due to fears of retaliation, told Government Executive that beginning this year employees at their institute have been required, as part of routine administrative reviews for grant applications and progress reports, to certify that the research documents do not contain certain words identified by a “text analysis tool.”

That certification refers to whether a grant has been populated into a spreadsheet for including a term flagged by the tool. Employees have not received a list of the words that the agency is searching for, but the program director and some colleagues have crowdsourced a list of terms that have previously caused problems including: diversity, equity and inclusion; gender; LGBT; racism; climate change; vaccine acceptance.

Along with seeking to terminate federal funding for DEI initiatives, the Trump administration has also canceled research related to climate change. And Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees NIH, is known for spreading misinformation about vaccines.

“We are now in a situation where people are finding this to just be so utterly unethical that there are terms that are flagged in the name of [agency] priorities that really aren't about identifying important areas of science to study,” the program director said. “They are identifying particular groups of people or topics not to study.”

As an example, the NIH employee said that if a grant report were detected for including the phrase “diverse perspectives,” they would either have to write a justification for why the use of the word “diverse” is acceptable in this case or the grantee would need to use a synonym, such as “various perspectives.”

“It's wasting the time of people who are highly trained scientists and science administrators to do something that is absurd,” the employee said, adding that it’s unclear who ultimately decides if a flagged word is appropriate and funding can therefore be unlocked.

While officials have been assessing NIH grants for words that may run afoul of Trump’s anti-diversity policies since the start of his second administration, the NIH program director said that the requirement to use a tool for identifying specific terms represents a more systematic attempt to scrutinize, and potentially cancel, research.

An NIH spokesperson told Government Executive in a statement that funding decisions are based on several factors including “scientific merit, public health priorities, available funding and adherence to federal requirements.”

“The agency relies on longstanding administrative and programmatic review processes to assess grant applications and progress reports,” the official said. “These reviews ensure compliance with applicable laws, regulations, agency policies and program priorities.”

The spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up question about which agency official has the final say on whether funding for a grant with a flagged word can be disbursed.

Jenna Norton, an NIH employee who was put on paid leave after publicly criticizing the Trump administration’s research policies, on April 30 publicized through social media the mandate that grants be deemed “clean” by a text review before receiving funding.

"I also want to address the use of the word ‘clean,’ which implies that grants that use ‘misaligned’ words like ‘minority,’ ‘gender,’ ‘latinx,’ ‘equity,’ ‘lived experience,’ or ‘social determinants of health’ are dirty,” she wrote. “This kind of language matters. Grants that address these issues are not dirty.”

Norton was reinstated to her position on May 4.

Additionally, The New York Times recently reported that the text scan requirement for certain words has contributed to a slowdown in awarding grants.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya wrote in a 2025 statement that the agency under the Trump administration would prioritize chronic health issues and “next-generation tools” like AI.

“A core function of NIH institutes and centers is to assess scientific merit within the context of NIH’s broader strategic goals and develop appropriate research funding plans accordingly,” he wrote. “In an environment where NIH receives more meritorious applications than it can fund, this review process is increasingly critical.”

The Partnership for Public Service nonprofit reported that there was a 24% reduction between fiscal years 2024 and 2025 in spending on science agency project grants.

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FEMA brings back employees it recently let go as it looks to 'stabilize' its workforce

Eric Katz — Mon, 04 May 2026 15:34:07 -0400

The Trump administration is rehiring disaster response staff it just let go in recent months, saying the reversals are necessary due to upcoming events and hurricane season.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is bringing back the employees as the Homeland Security Department has welcomed new leadership and is under pressure from an ongoing lawsuit challenging the dismissals. The staffers, part of the Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery, or CORE, saw FEMA decline to renew their contracts beginning late last year.

All told, around 200 employees lost their jobs and are now being asked to come back, except for those who retired or told FEMA they are no longer interested in the work. FEMA’s reversal came to light as part of a lawsuit the American Federation of Government Employees and other groups brought against the agency over the non-renewals, which they argued were illegally ordered by the Homeland Security Department and would have left FEMA incapable of delivering on its mission.

“As we approach the 2026 hurricane season and the FIFA World Cup, FEMA is taking targeted steps to stabilize our workforce and strengthen readiness,” a FEMA spokesperson said. “Under new leadership, FEMA is addressing outstanding personnel actions to ensure workforce stability and a strong, deployable surge force for upcoming national events and potential disasters.”

CORE employees, who typically serve in two-to-four year stints and generally see their contracts renewed, will, depending on performance and need, have their agreements renewed for one year if they were set to expire between Jan. 1 and May 31 of this year. Employees whose contracts are set to expire starting June 1 will be subject to an additional “functional review” before they can similarly be offered a one-year extension. After all employees go through such a review, they will become eligible for normal renewals of two-to-four years.

FEMA leadership has said as part of court depositions that DHS ordered the agency to develop plans to cut 50% of its workforce. Work on the plan to implement widespread staffing cuts was “put on hold” to implement the CORE non-renewal plan, said Karen Evans, the current FEMA head. She suggested the shedding of COREs was related only to right-sizing the workforce and not necessarily connected to the larger workforce plans.

The agency paused the mass non-renewals when winter storms hit much of the country in January. FEMA’s decision to rehire the CORE it had let go earlier this year was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lawsuit has proved a major nuisance for the administration, as more officials are deposed and more internal documents are ordered released to the court. Joseph Guy, a former deputy chief of staff at DHS, was set to be deposed on Monday. Kara Voorhies, a contractor accused of having undue influence over FEMA operations, is still awaiting scheduling for her deposition.

Evans, under court order, has turned over some screenshots of conversations she had on the secure messaging app Signal, though the judge on the case has demanded a more extensive review of her personal phone and an unredacted copy of her personal notes detailing her activities each day. While the judge ordered both of those disclosures to occur on Monday, Trump administration attorneys said Evans had gone to Idaho and it would not be possible to get access to her phone or notes until she returns.

It is not yet clear what impact the reinstatements will have on the lawsuit, and attorneys for AFGE and other plaintiffs on the case have said they are still reviewing the matter.

Cameron Hamilton, who Trump tapped to lead FEMA when he first took office but fired last year, is set to be nominated to once again lead the agency, according to several reports. Hamilton had clashed with then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who Trump has since fired. New DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has pledged to quickly work through the backlog of disaster response work that has built up in the last 16 months, in part due to Noem’s policy to review all expenditures of more than $100,000.

As FEMA looks to stabilize its workforce ahead of hurricane season and to address that backlog, it has also reinstated employees who warned about the agency’s diminished capacity in a public letter last year. More than a dozen employees sat on paid administrative leave for eight months before being reinstated.

FEMA employs around 10,000 CORE employees, about 4,000 reservists who serve on a part-time basis and only activate during disasters and around 5,000 permanent, full-time staff.

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Coast Guard officer promotion advanced by Senate Republicans despite IG finding of whistleblower retaliation

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 01 May 2026 13:36:16 -0400

A group of Senate Democrats on Tuesday requested that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin urge the White House to withdraw the pending promotion of a Coast Guard officer who they say has been found to have retaliated against a whistleblower.

In their letter, the lawmakers wrote that the inspector general for the Homeland Security Department in 2018 determined that Commander Jesse Millard retaliated against a subordinate after she filed a complaint against him and other Coast Guard leaders.

Names were redacted in the IG report that the senators cited, but the document states that investigators found the “totality of evidence” showed that a lieutenant commander stationed at the Coast Guard Academy would have received higher evaluation marks if she hadn't submitted discrimination and harassment complaints against her superiors.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., one of the letter’s signers, said during a Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee meeting in March that advancing Millard’s promotion would contravene progress that lawmakers and the Coast Guard have made since the public disclosure of Operation Fouled Anchor — an internal review of mishandled sexual assault allegations at the service's Academy from the late 1980s to 2006 that officials did not inform Congress about.

“Supporting Commander Millard's promotion would be a step in the wrong direction from all the critical work that we have done since Operation Fouled Anchor,” she said. “If we intend to ensure there is accountability, then this committee cannot allow the promotion of officers into the Coast Guard's senior ranks who have substantiated claims of retaliation in their records.”

Ultimately, the panel voted to advance Millard’s promotion to become a captain in a 15-13 party-line vote. The full Senate has not yet voted on the nomination.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the chairman of the Commerce panel, said during the meeting that Millard was the “real victim.”

“The complainant in question filed repeated unsubstantiated accusations of discrimination and other charges against multiple senior officers,” he said. “At some point when the complaints are against everyone, the problem isn't the co-workers or the managers.”

While the IG substantiated the whistleblower retaliation allegation, investigators were not able to confirm some of the other related accusations. In response to the review, however, the watchdog did recommend that the Coast Guard require commanders to document in writing the reasons for their findings with respect to bullying and harassment complaints and mandate supplemental training for supervisors and managers on the service’s anti-discrimination, harassment and bullying policies.

Cruz also said the whistleblower “sought to pull strings” with Biden DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who she worked for when he was deputy DHS secretary during the Obama administration, by discussing her complaints at the time with him.

DHS backed Millard’s promotion in a statement to Government Executive.

“The Department of Homeland Security strongly supports the nomination of Coast Guard Commander Jesse Millard, following 23 years of distinguished and honorable service,” a department spokesperson said. “These attacks are nothing more than a politicized hit job against an outstanding officer who deserves promotion.”

Along with Baldwin, Tuesday’s letter to Mullin was signed by Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., the ranking member of the Commerce panel, Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., ranking member of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Coast Guard, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., co-chair of the Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus.

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After reductions, VA chief says facilities can 'hire where they need and what they need'

Eric Katz — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:07:35 -0400

The Veterans Affairs Department can hire any employee it wants at any time, the head of the agency told lawmakers on Thursday as he sought to address concerns about staffing declines and new restrictions that have set ceilings on workforce levels.

No VA facility is facing constraints on bringing in new personnel, Secretary Doug Collins said, who once again stressed that previous hiring efforts outpaced demand for health care through the department. He made the comments despite VA placing staffing caps on each facility that led to the elimination of tens of thousands of vacant positions and were designed to add layers of review to be surpassed.

“We will hire every need that we have in the department,” Collins said before a panel of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Our hospitals have the complete autonomy to hire where they need and what they need going forward.”

Collins’ comments came following his push to reduce VA’s workforce by 30,000 employees last year and the subsequent vacancy eliminations. The reductions have raised some bipartisan concerns, though Collins has maintained that his department was overbloated and VA care has not suffered. Between 2019 and 2025, he said, VA’s workforce grew by 14% while its interactions with veterans increased by just 6%.

VA has put “baselines” into place that set staffing levels for each facility, as Government Executive first reported last year. VA components cannot surpass their high-level personnel caps without approval from the department’s human resources and finance offices. Still, Collins said after the hearing the baselines would not impact any hiring effort.

“They're [full-time equivalent] accounts that are assigned to each facility,” the secretary said. “Those FTE accounts are not in a position to keep anybody from being hired.”

One VA official said it is accurate that VA facilities have "autonomy to hire what they need," but must operate within certain boundaries. They cannot simply hire as many employees as they want, the official said, though they maintain flexibility. Facility leaders have been instructed to escalate anything that has an impact on care delivery and hiring of doctors and nurses is always supported.

After years of growth, VA saw a net decrease in both doctors and nurses in 2025. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., the top Democrat on the subcommittee that held Thursday’s hearing, noted that VA’s fiscal 2027 budget would see further reductions in both categories. He added that proposed increases in the department’s budget would disproportionately go toward private sector care rather than to offerings within VA’s system.

“We see growing demand for VA care, but we're not seeing here the request for the investments in clinical staff to reflect that,” Ossoff said.

Collins noted that VA has eight pilot programs underway to get new hires onboarded more quickly, including by allowing employees to begin working before they fully go through the vetting process. The department is looking to expand those pilots by the end of the year and is hopeful it can bring average time-to-hire to between 30 and 40 days. VA has already demonstrated progress on that front, Collins said.

He also requested lawmakers provide more flexibility on the top pay levels for VA doctors. Congress previously authorized the department to exceed the existing $400,000 pay ceiling for 300 employees, which VA is currently working on implementing. That represents just 1.5% of VA’s doctors, however, and Collins said lawmakers should instead choose five specialties and wave pay caps for all doctors within them.

“My spouse, I have three kids, and at Christmas, she made sure that every kid had the same number of presents to open,” Collins said, alluding to the “inequities” created by the limited number of pay cap waivers Congress created.

Collins acknowledged that VA plans to close a handful of its contract facilities this year, though he said those medical offices were not performing up to the department’s standards and veterans would be able to receive care in other areas.

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How an obscure federal agency threatens to upend union disputes

Erich Wagner — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 12:44:46 -0400

This story has been updated at 4 p.m. ET to include comments from FMCS.

A small federal agency has taken unusual steps to interfere in federal employee unions’ ability to secure independent adjudicators to hash out disputes with agency management, though on Friday it clarified that its new approach won’t apply to pre-existing cases, following pressure from advocates and arbitrators alike.

As the Trump administration has defended in court the legality of two 2025 executive orders that strip two-thirds of the federal workforce of its collective bargaining rights on national security grounds, its attorneys have frequently relied on the idea that unions could challenge the edicts’ validity as part of preexisting administrative disputes to support the idea that federal judges lack jurisdiction to hear the labor groups’ lawsuits.

“The government identified numerous avenues for unions to challenge the executive order’s validity before the [Federal Labor Relations Authority] and then on direct review in a court of appeals, and plaintiff fails to explain why those avenues are unavailable,” the government wrote in a legal brief last October. “Specifically, the government explained that plaintiff can file an unfair-labor-practice charge with the FLRA’s general counsel or raise such a claim through the grievance and arbitration procedures in the union’s collective bargaining agreements.”

But one of those touted avenues—arbitrated grievances—was temporarily closed for some unions earlier this month. The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service issued new guidance last week stating that it would not appoint arbitrators to hear grievances at agencies impacted by the national security EOs without management’s assent. President Trump previously sought to eliminate FMCS entirely via executive order last year, but that effort petered out following multiple federal court orders blocking the agency's closure.

“When an agency invokes an executive order as a reason for non-participation during the arbitration panel selection process, the agency has revoked any actual or implied consent to participate in the proceedings,” wrote FMCS General Counsel Anna Davis, a career employee who also serves as the senior official performing the duties of the agency director. “Without an agency’s consent, FMCS cannot continue the process of issuing an arbitration panel. Again, ‘FMCS has no power to . . . compel parties to arbitrate any issue.’”

But federal sector labor attorneys said that document amounts to a post hoc justification, issued only after the agency began mysteriously balking at assigning arbitrators in multiple cases earlier this month. Suzanne Summerlin, an independent attorney that represents unions, said in two separate cases, FMCS interrupted and delayed the arbitrator selection process over “threshold issues,” and in one case requested she submit a legal brief in support of appointing an arbitrator.

One case involved one of the agencies targeted by Trump in his union executive orders, despite the fact that a 1993 Federal Labor Relations Authority precedent requires agencies that have been recently exempted from federal sector labor law to continue to participate in preexisting grievance proceedings. The underlying collective bargaining agreement also allows either party to advance those proceedings unilaterally. In another case, FMCS demanded information about whether a bargaining unit was made up of “information management” employees, something that would make those workers ineligible for union representation, before allowing arbitration to proceed.

“It seems like they’re just trying to gum up the works and not let anyone get a grievance arbitration going,” Summerlin said. “It feels like a power grab by the political factions in these agencies, for sure.”

Ibidun Roberts, another independent labor attorney who works frequently with federal employee unions, described a similar scenario, in which the Veterans Affairs Department seemingly engaged in communication in which the Veterans Affairs Department privately requested that FMCS block the appointment of an arbitrator. She said the questions posed by FMCS in her and other attorneys’ recent experience for decades have been for arbitrators—or the FLRA, on appeal—to decide, not the mediation service.

“We don’t bargain in order for FMCS to make the decision, we do it so that an arbitrator will make them,” she said. “It was wrong for VA to even put them in that predicament, but it was also wrong for FMCS to take them up on it. The response should have been, ‘We don’t get involved.’”

Arbitrators, too, have taken notice. If FMCS moves forward with its efforts to take a more active role in the grievance process, it could impact their livelihood, as they are typically paid by the case.

“Several of our members, as well as some advocates, have brought this to the Academy's attention, and we are seeking clarity about the actual nature of the agency's actions, and the reasons for them,” Joshua Javits, a federal arbitrator and president of the National Academy of Arbitrators, told Government Executive.

In an interview Friday, Davis told Government Executive that although the April 22 guidance remains operative, it will not apply to arbitrator panel requests made prior to that date. The decision to issue new guidance came after VA was “very vocal” about its refusal to participate in grievance proceedings, and following outreach to union attorneys and, ultimately, the Justice Department.

While union attorneys have argued that agencies had already provided their consent to participating in arbitration when they signed their respective collective bargaining agreements, Davis said FMCS is measuring consent at the time of the request for a panel of arbitrators. She said FMCS is developing FAQ documents to better explain its new approach, in which panel requests involving agencies implicated in Trump’s executive orders are honored—to preserve CBA-related deadlines—but held in abeyance until courts can hash out the edicts’ legality.

“There’s ongoing litigation, so we’re not rejecting or denying arbitration requests—we’re honoring the timeline in [unions’] CBAs and we’re still accepting and preserving requests, so we still wanted to honor that,” Davis said. “We’re not trying to insert ourselves, we’re trying to preserve and protect the process.”

Since the guidance was issued, three requests for arbitrator panels have been filed, of which two have been held in abeyance, both involving the VA.

Robert Tobias, distinguished practitioner in residence at American University’s Key Leadership Program and a former president of the National Treasury Employees Union, was aghast when he learned that FMCS was delaying the issuance of arbitrator panels.

“Oh my god,” he said. “This is supposed to be a ministerial process . . . Their job is only to ensure that the arbitrators who are on the list are competent to be arbitrators, that they have the requisite background, experience and qualifications to be arbitrators on the list. The job is to assign them when requested, and if either of the parties think that the arbitrator lacks qualifications, that’s for someone else to determine, not FMCS.”

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Feds that Trump fired without cause can take their appeals directly to federal court, judges say

Eric Katz — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:01:45 -0400

Federal employees fired without a stated cause can challenge that decision directly in federal court without first going to a separate panel designed for civil servants, two judges have ruled in decisions with potentially broad reaching impacts on the Trump administration’s efforts to more quickly dismiss certain workers.

Maurene Comey, a former career attorney in the Justice Department and the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, won the initial decision on Tuesday in a case in which she is appealing her termination last year. Comey has suggested her firing was the direct result of her connection to her father, a longstanding target of President Trump who is also facing prosecution from the administration, or her perceived political beliefs. In a separate case earlier this month, a judge ruled his court was the proper forum for Mary Comans, a former Federal Emergency Management Agency official, to challenge her dismissal.

Comey and Comans are among a slew of employees who the Trump administration has dismissed with no stated reason, instead justifying them by arguing the moves were within the president’s scope of authority. Their termination notices suggested the actions were taken “pursuant to Article II of the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

Justice has taken a particularly aggressive approach in dismissing career staff, beginning just hours after Trump took the oath of office when it fired personnel in the Executive Office of Immigration Review and elsewhere. It has continued to remove employees, including both Senior Executive Service staff and standard civil servants, without cause.

In Comey’s case, New York-based U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman dismissed the administration’s argument that she must take her case to the Merit Systems Protection Board as most federal workers must under the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act.

“The Court concludes that Comey’s case does not fall within the purview of the CSRA’s scheme because she was fired pursuant to Article II of the Constitution, not pursuant to the CSRA itself,” Furman said. “Defendants’ sole reliance on the Constitution — rather than the removal provisions of the CSRA — places Comey’s case outside the universe of cases that Congress intended the MSPB to resolve.”

Trump has fired MSPB’s Democratic head, Cathy Harris, who is now challenging that dismissal before the Supreme Court. The board’s two remaining Republican members recently ruled that some federal employees fired using the Article II justification will no longer have appeal rights before MSPB.

The administration is asserting the employees it has fired are inferior officers under the Constitution and the president therefore has full control over their appointment and removal. Some legal observers have suggested Justice and other agencies are looking to broaden the population of employees it can fire on an at-will basis. The Trump administration has separately created a new classification of federal employees called Schedule Policy/Career, estimating it would allow agencies to fire around 50,000 workers in policy-setting roles at will.

In Comans case, the former FEMA chief financial officer fired after the administration alleged she misused federal dollars when authorizing funds to house migrants in hotels, Virginia-based District Judge Michael Nachmanoff said the terms of the dismissal made federal court the “mandatory” forum for a challenge. Nachmanoff similarly found that because FEMA circumvented civil service law in firing Comans, MSPB was not an appropriate place for her to challenge the decision. The judge dismissed her request for back pay and monetary damages, however.

The judge in neither Comans nor Comey’s cases has yet ruled on the merits of their appeals, which center on the administration improperly side-stepping due process requirements and unlawfully targeting them for political reasons.

Federal workers are typically not considered at-will and current statute requires that agencies provide notice, cause and an opportunity to rebut allegations before a firing can take place. Civil service protections date back more than a century and were most recently solidified in the CSRA. They have taken shape to prevent presidents from interfering with a career workforce of experts for political reasons. Good government advocates have long argued that undermining those protections could return the U.S. government to a spoils system in which political patronage threatens agencies’ capacity to deliver on their missions.

Comey’s initial victory in court came on Tuesday, the same day Justice again brought charges against her father over a social media post it said was threatening the president.

Clarick Gueron Reisbaum, the firm representing Comey, celebrated the judge’s decision.

“No president can ignore the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and federal law to fire a career federal employee based solely on her last name,” the firm said. “We look forward to continuing to vindicate Ms. Comey's constitutional rights and protect our civil service.”

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EPA workers disciplined for dissent letter get legal aid from whistleblower groups

Erich Wagner — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 17:22:18 -0400

A pair of whistleblower protection organizations announced Tuesday that they will represent dozens of Environmental Protection Agency staffers who were suspended last year following their endorsement of a “declaration of dissent” to Administrator Lee Zeldin in proceedings before a quasi-judicial agency challenging their discipline.

Last summer, more than 600 EPA employees signed the letter excoriating Zeldin’s leadership of the agency, alleging among other things that his leadership undermined scientific consensus in favor of polluters. Though a majority of signatories did so anonymously, the agency quickly suspended more than 100 employees who publicly signed onto the letter. Ultimately, the agency handed out a range of disciplinary measures, from letters of reprimand to unpaid suspensions and even termination.

Last December, half a dozen of those employees who were targeted with firing challenged their terminations before the Merit Systems Protection Board, with the help of environmental advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. On Tuesday, whistleblower organizations Lawyers for Good Government and the Government Accountability Project announced they would aid in other EPA workers' cases.

According to L4GG and GAP, 15 complaints in connection with the firings and other discipline have already been filed with the Office of Special Counsel, alleging violations of the employees’ First Amendment and whistleblower protections, and “many more” will be lodged in the coming days.

“Lawyers for Good Government is proud to stand with these courageous employees for doing exactly what the law protects, and what the public demands, in telling the truth about dangerous government misconduct,” said Traci Feit Love, L4GG’s founder and executive director. “Retaliation against them is not just illegal, it’s a direct assault on the democratic principles that protect public servants who expose threats to public safety.”

Recent reporting from E&E News suggests that EPA leadership was warned that disciplining those who signed the dissent letter was likely unjustified under the rules governing federal employment. Officials within the agency told leadership that signing the letter did not run afoul of ethics rules, and a top EPA lawyer warned taking action against them constituted a “significant” risk of legal liability in an email apparently accidentally divulged by EPA’s Freedom of Information Act office.

“Taking any such action would present significant legal risk, as the letter is likely protected speech under the First Amendment,” said Nate Nichols, an assistant general counsel at EPA within its employment law practice group.

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From bowling repairs to zoology, Trump admin consolidates job titles affecting 5,000 feds

Eric Katz — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:55:28 -0400

Bartenders, meatcutters, woodworkers and bookbinders will all no longer be official job titles in the federal government after the Office of Personnel Management announced on Friday it was consolidating 115 occupational series that it said are obsolete or redundant.

The change will impact around 5,000 employees, the federal government’s human resources agency said, though the employees will be shifted into new job titles and may not see any impact to their pay. OPM said the consolidated roles, which will be absorbed into the many hundreds of remaining job series, will help streamline positions with low employment or obsolete duties, modernize job classifications, promote more transparent qualification standards and better support hiring based on skills rather than educational attainment.

In the first phase of the overhaul, OPM said it focused primarily on job series with fewer than 100 employees across government, outdated roles that require non-transferable skills, little or no hiring activity over the last few years or no projected need for replacements based on workforce planning. It also identified roles that are duplicative with other occupational categories or that no agency identified a need to maintain.

The impacts will be felt across a wide range of governmental activities. The elimination of the “office automation clerical and assistance” role will affect the most individuals at 862. More than 600 “guides” throughout government — those who give talks, tours, explanations and provide other services to guests at parks and other sites of public interest — will be absorbed into the “general arts and information” job series.

Just two staff involved in “bowling equipment repairing” — whose work includes “minor repairs to bowling approaches and pins” — will see their job series phased out. Many military bases throughout the country maintain bowling alleys on site. The vast activity at military sites account for additional job series the government no longer needs, in part due to the outsourcing of such work, including bakers, bartenders, meatcutters and waiters. Those roles will now be consolidated into the “general food preparation and serving” category.

Some of the eliminated jobs no longer have any people working in them: the government currently employs zero elevator operators or film assemblers and repairers, and the titles will be abolished.

Interior of passenger elevator, showing operator controls. Credit: Library of Congress

One federal HR official praised OPM for the changes, saying it made sense to generally clean up and simplify the list of federal roles and would significantly reduce back-end burdens when hiring for certain specialized or scientific roles.

“It’s the most reasonable and data driven change we’ve seen [from OPM] so far,” the official said.

OPM said the effort would bring “clarity and consistency” across the government and better support the needs of agencies.

“The evolution of work across government, including new technologies, scientific advances, and shifting mission demands, has led many series to become low-use, outdated, or overlapping,” OPM said.

It reminded agencies to follow all existing statutes on pay and grade retention, as well to adhere to their collective bargaining requirements. The agency said it would “provide comprehensive implementation guidance” to ensure a consistent approach across government, protect employee rights and minimize disruption.

OPM acknowledged that employees and stakeholders would have questions about the changes and vowed to ensure a smooth transition. Some of the consolidated jobs require highly specialized skills and extensive hands-on training and those expectations will not change, it said. It will work with agencies to help them write clear position descriptions for specialty, mission-critical jobs.

Some of the impacted jobs are technical or scientific in nature, such as for the government's nearly three-dozen zoologists or its more than 300 employees in fish and wildlife administration. Those employees will become general natural resources managers and biologists. The federal HR official said the more generalized categories will make it far easier for hiring personnel to determine whether an applicant meets minimum qualifications.

As OPM stated, many of the consolidated job functions already appear to be waning in prevalence. The government will no longer hold a specialized title for its nine theater specialists and its lone remaining “coin/currency checker” — whose job is to visually examine finished coins for defects, discoloration or missing letters, as well as U.S. currency, stamps and bonds for any imperfections — will no longer have such a distinct title.

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USDA kicks off more employee relocations, including some that spark déjà vu

Eric Katz — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:15:07 -0400

Updated April 23 at 5:42 p.m.

The Agriculture Department on Thursday announced additional relocation plans for employees as part of its larger reorganization, including a new center for food inspectors in Iowa and a second attempt at sending research staff to Kansas City.

The Food Safety Inspection Service will send out two-thirds of its headquarters staff currently based in Washington, the agency said, to a newly stood up National Food Safety Center in Urbandale, Iowa, a new Science Center in Athens, Ga., or other locations. The Iowa facility will become FSIS’ largest office with 200 people and USDA said the changes will move staff “closer to the agricultural and food production systems that FSIS regulates.”

The department’s Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture, meanwhile, will once again relocate employees to Kansas City. It also did so in President Trump’s first term, though President Biden subsequently moved the agencies’ headquarters back to Washington while keeping the Kansas City offices open. This time around, ERS and NIFA will move employees out of the capital region to Kansas City and bring other employees who have since been shifted to other locations back to that hub.

Following the 2019 moves, both agencies lost more than half of their staff, leading to a significant decline in productivity from which it took the agencies years to recover. The latest USDA reorganization plan received overwhelmingly negative feedback during the public comment period from lawmakers, employees and local governments on the larger USDA reorganization, as well in meetings the department held with tribal governments.

The reshaping of those components is part of a larger USDA reorganization that will see 2,600 employees shifted from the capital region into new regional hubs around the country. In addition to Kansas City, those hubs will be in Salt Lake City, Raleigh, N.C.; Fort Collins, Colo., and Indianapolis. The department previously announced it would move its U.S. Forest Service headquarters, and 260 employees, to Salt Lake City.

USDA’s fiscal 2026 appropriations bill blocked the department from reorganizing or relocating any offices or employees unless Congress authorizes it. The head of USFS recently told Congress his general counsel’s office approved the moves anyway, though Democrats suggested that would play out in court.

FSIS said none of its front-line employees—the inspectors themselves who make up 85% of the agency’s workforce—will be impacted by the changes. It will instead by relocating administrative, technical and support staff, which officials said would reduce duplication and increase accountability.

Justin Ransom, the FSIS administrator, said the moves will improve training and bring more policy expertise to the front-line workforce.

“The National Food Safety Center will help us better prepare and support our workforce while also creating new opportunities to attract and develop the next generation of food safety professionals,” Ransom said.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, has pushed the Trump administration to consolidate office space and move employees out of Washington and openly encouraged USDA specifically to place those workers in her state. The new center will be placed in an existing FSIS building.

The Georgia-based science center will expand upon an existing laboratory in the area and expand capabilities in microbiology, chemistry and epidemiology. The facility will boost access to academic institutions and industry partners, the agency said, and improve recruiting.

FSIS will not issue any layoffs, though employees who reject management-directed reassignments must either accept those roles or lose their jobs. USDA has vowed to provide employees with relocation assistance and other benefits required in statute. Secretary Brooke Rollins told lawmakers this week she was not sure how much those payments would cost. USDA requested $55 million for relocation costs and to prepare buildings for sale as part of its fiscal 2027 budget, though department officials said it hopes to complete the moves this summer so employees with children can enroll their kids in new schools before the school year starts.

The agency plans to leave 100 employees in the national capital region, while also establishing a presence in Fort Collins.

In an email to staff obtained by Government Executive, Ransom said there were still details FSIS was working out and the agency would do its best to provide information as it becomes available.

"I recognize that changes of this scale have real personal and professional impacts," he said. This transition will take place over time and we are committed to working through it together."

In addition to NIFA and ERS, the Agricultural Research Service and National Agricultural Statistics Service—the four components collectively make up the Research, Education and Economics Mission Area—will also be moving staff. As previously announced, ARS will shift employees out of its Beltsville complex comprised of 400 buildings and into field locations around the country. It did not specify where the employees will go, but said they will be better suited to support producers after reporting to locations the agency has identified to absorb additional personnel.

NASS will move some employees out of Washington to Saint Louis and other locations.

“Science is most effective when it’s connected to the people and places it’s meant to serve,” said Undersecretary for Research, Education, and Economics and Chief Scientist Scott Hutchins. “This effort strengthens our ability to deliver actionable research, trusted data, and innovative solutions by aligning our teams more closely with agricultural producers across the country.”

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FAA sets records in effort to hire gamers as air traffic controllers

Edward Graham — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:00:00 -0400

The Federal Aviation Administration has broken recruitment numbers in its push to hire gamers to be among its next crop of air traffic controllers, according to the Transportation Department.

Transportation — which oversees the FAA — launched an ad campaign on April 10 targeting video gamers, saying in a press release that the effort “aims to reach young adults who possess useful skills that are transferable to a career in air traffic control.”

A YouTube video associated with the campaign begins with the Xbox One logo before breaking into snippets from Twitch streams and then a montage of air traffic controllers and planes, telling viewers to “level up” and apply for positions beginning at midnight on April 17.

The FAA launched a similar “level up” campaign in 2021 that was also focused on hiring 18- to 30-year-old gamers to be air traffic controllers.

“With only about 25 percent of controllers holding a traditional college degree, this effort is focused on reaching talented young people pursuing alternative career paths, many of whom are active in gaming,” Transportation said in a press release. “Feedback from controller exit interviews reinforces this, with several controllers pointing to gaming as an influence on their ability to think quickly, stay focused, and manage complexity.”

During an appearance at the Semafor World Economy event on Friday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the department had already received 6,000 applicants since the application portal opened. As of Saturday, applications were no longer being accepted.

Duffy called the hiring push “wildly successful,” and said that “we’ve had a flood of young people coming in that want to be air traffic controllers.”

In a subsequent Facebook video shared on Duffy’s account on Saturday, the department said that it had received 12,350 applications, “more than double the previous record.” Of these applicants, 10,779 were identified as being qualified for air traffic controller roles.

The job call, which led to a posting for an “Air Traffic Control Specialist - Trainee” role, said “no prior air traffic experience is required,” and that potential hires would begin with training at the FAA Academy.

Transportation said there are almost 11,000 current air traffic controllers, “with more than 4,000 trainees in the pipeline.” But new hires are needed to meet rising demands and to replace personnel leaving the workforce.

A January Government Accountability Office report found that the total number of air traffic controllers has decreased by roughly 6% over the past decade, even as the number of flights relying on these personnel has increased by 10%.

The effort to attract young applicants with non-traditional backgrounds comes amid a broader governmentwide push to fill critical job vacancies — particularly those in cybersecurity or technology areas — by expanding hiring criteria.

The Office of Personnel Management issued new standards for technology employees last week that no longer include degree requirements, part of an effort to prioritize job aptitude over educational background.

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Labor groups sue to block FLRA’s political seizure of union elections

Erich Wagner — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:27:02 -0400

A coalition of labor groups on Thursday sued the Federal Labor Relations Authority in an effort to block new regulations granting the agency’s political appointees control over union elections at federal agencies, arguing both that the agency robbed stakeholders of the opportunity to weigh in on the changes and that the measure would have the opposite effect from its stated aim.

Since 1983, the handling of petitions for union elections and other petitions relating to the composition of bargaining units at federal agencies have primarily been handled by the FLRA’s regional directors and their staff—career employees—with a process by which parties can appeal their decisions to the authority’s three-member board, presidential appointees confirmed by the Senate.

But last month, the FLRA issued an interim final rule wresting control of those petitions from regional directors, who the agency said will now work “collaboratively” with the three-member authority to process, and removed the appeals process. The rule, set to take effect April 23, bypassed the notice-and-comment period agencies traditionally employ when they consider major changes to their operating rules.

“After reexamination of its practices, the FLRA finds that the memorandum of delegated authorities and responsibilities to the [regional directors], and the related regulations governing representation matters, merit revision,” the rule states. “The FLRA envisions a streamlined process in which representation matters are resolved through the collaborative efforts of the regional offices and the authority—rather than a strict separation of an initial decision by an RD, followed by a possible appeal to, and potentially duplicative decision by, the authority.”

Thursday’s legal challenge, filed by the American Federation of Government Employees, National Association of Government Employees, National Federation of Federal Employees and other unions, argues that the interim rule’s “threadbare” justification for upending four decades of precedent, the peremptory implementation window and failure to seek public comment before finalizing the regulations all amount to the type of “arbitrary and capricious” decision making forbidden by the Administrative Procedure Act.

While the FLRA stated that a reason for issuing this change was to eliminate “duplicative” proceedings in cases in which a party appeals the regional director’s decision, the unions said such cases are exceedingly rare: in 2025, 277 representation petitions were filed with the agency’s regional directors, while only six cases were appealed to the authority’s three-member board. And contrary to the agency’s claim that the new process would “streamline” the processing of union elections, the three-member authority was the only part of the agency to miss its processing goal last year.

“Indeed, in fiscal 2025, the authority’s own performance report stated that it did not meet its targets for the ‘average age of representation cases decided or otherwise resolved by the authority’ nor the ‘average age of representation cases pending before the authority,’” the unions wrote. “In contrast, targets for the percentage of cases ‘resolved by the [Office of General Counsel] through withdrawal, election or issuance of a decision or order within 120 days of the filing of a petition’ and the same ‘within 365 days of the filing of a petition’ were met by the OGC and its regional directors. It is both implausible and unexplained that these unacceptable delays at the authority level would be remedied by requiring the authority to take on an enormous amount of additional representation decisions.”

The unions filed their lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, where the case has been assigned to Chief Judge Denise Casper, an Obama appointee.

In a statement Thursday, AFGE National President Everett Kelley suggested that the FLRA had an ulterior motive for its regulatory change: meddling in ongoing and future union organization drives.

“Make no mistake, these changes are significant and substantive,” he said. “They eliminate the nonpartisan, nonpolitical decision-making process that currently governs who can and can’t be represented by a union. We should recognize this for what it is—just another step in this administration’s efforts to politicize federal employment and make it easier to retaliate against those, including unions, that speak out against them.”

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Hegseth orders termination of union contracts

Erich Wagner — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 11:32:20 -0400

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week instructed leaders to terminate most of the department’s collective bargaining agreements, more than a year after President Trump signed an executive order banning federal employee unions from many agencies on national security grounds.

In an April 9 memo obtained by Government Executive, Hegseth gave his deputies 24 hours to take action to cancel their union contracts, with some exceptions. In April 2025, Hegseth exempted bargaining units made up of Federal Wage System workers at four installations—the Letterkenny Munition Center in Pennsylvania, the Air Force Test Center in California, the Air Force Sustainment Center in Oklahoma, and the Fleet Readiness Center Southeast in Florida.

“I hereby direct the termination of all collective bargaining agreements to which the department is a party, not subject to a court order enjoining implementation to which the department is a party, not subject to a court order enjoining implementation of Executive Order 14251, ‘Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs,’ within 24 hours of the date of this memorandum, except as applied to the population covered by the [April 2025] secretary of defense certification . . . and the local employing offices of any agency police officers, security guards or firefighters, pursuant to EO 14251,” Hegseth wrote. “This action is required to align agency operations with national security requirements as outlined in EO 14251.”

Spared from this memo are unions like the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and the Federal Education Association, who both secured preliminary injunctions blocking implementation of the executive order, which cites a seldom-used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to strip two-thirds of the federal workforce of their collective bargaining rights on national security grounds, last fall.

Not so for the nation’s largest federal employee union. In a statement Wednesday, American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley decried Hegseth’s decision as “cowardly.”

“For 50 years, these employees have exercised their union rights; under several administrations, during a global pandemic and throughout peacetime and wartime, including our most recent conflict with Iran,” he said. “To rip up the union contracts of civilian employees after touting a successful ceasefire in the Middle East is not only a slap in the face to the employees who supported those efforts, but again proves that this action has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with silencing workers’ voices.”

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OPM cuts degree requirements for government tech jobs in new standards

Natalie Alms — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:38:46 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management released new classification and qualification standards for technology employees on Monday that make it easier for those without higher education degrees to get government jobs.

The update is meant to move the government from relying on strict requirements for higher education and years of experience when hiring and promoting workers to using assessments meant to actually test for the skills needed for a given job.

The new standards for technology employees no longer include degree requirements, an OPM official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Nextgov/FCW. The goal is to make higher education and experience at prior jobs one — but not the only — way to show competency as the government shifts more to relying on testing for actual skills.

“For the first time, your fitness for the job will be determined via a formal assessment rather than based upon whether you have a bachelor’s degree or some minimum amount of work experience,” Scott Kupor, the director of OPM, wrote in a blog about the change.

OPM is now rewriting the standards for all 604 occupational series roles and looking to reduce the number of series, too. The agency aims to move from self-attestation of skills in government hiring to formal assessments to test for aptitude for a given job.

The new change, years in the making, has bipartisan support, unlike some of the administration’s other revisions to government hiring that have garnered pushback from critics that say that they are politicizing the workforce.

Administrations led by both parties have sought to move the government toward skills-based hiring. The Biden administration announced that the government would be rewiring resume requirements for the government’s IT workforce in 2024, although it was working on this even before then.

A Trump-era executive order from 2020 directed OPM to review job classifications and qualifications, which set the minimum requirements like educational attainment or years of experience for different types of government jobs. Congress has also passed legislation codifying changes that stress skills over educational attainment.

Technology was a good starting point, the Trump administration said, because of the fast-paced rate of change in the field where the government is wanting to hire up.

“The move to skills based hiring over time, we think, really does open up many additional possibilities for US citizens who would like to join the federal government to do so,” the OPM official said. “We don't want lack of a specific degree to be an impediment.”

Kupor's blog post cited Edward Coristine — a member of the administration’s controversial Department of Government Efficiency effort who goes by the moniker ‘Big Balls’ — as an example of the opportunities made available by removing degree requirements in his blog about the change.

Before working for the government, Coristine was previously fired from a company, Path Networks, after leaking internal firm secrets to a competitor, Krebs and Bloomberg News have previously reported.

In the media, an existing federal employee objected to Coristine’s place in the government, wrote Kupor, with the “chief complaint” being that “Ed was 19 years old and was a Northwestern University dropout.”

Coristine, who now works at the White House, is a “world-class software developer,” wrote Kupor. “And, if they are in fact world-class engineers, then we should pay them at the level at which they are performing versus force-fitting them into a lower pay level because they have no prior work experience.”

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Dem senators boost effort to reinstate 2 immigration judges

Erich Wagner — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:44:54 -0400

A half dozen Democratic senators this week urged a federal appeals court in Washington to expedite its consideration of two immigration judges’ appeal of their ouster last year, after a quasi-judicial agency said they could be removed at will.

Last month, the Merit Systems Protection Board upended decades of precedent when it ruled that the president had Article II constitutional authority to remove inferior officers like immigration judges on an at-will basis.

But in their appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Megan Jackler and Brandon Jaroch, who were both fired by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi in February 2025, said that MSPB’s decision mistakenly relied on “dictum,” a legal term for portions of a judge’s writing that is made in passing and not relevant to the actual decision, in Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a case invalidating removal protections of principal officers. Unlike the judges in this case, principal officers may be removed at will due to their lack of a direct supervisor between them and the president.

“The crux of [MSPB’s] decision rests on a half-sentence of dictum from Seila Law, in which the Supreme Court characterized its prior precedent as having permitted for-cause removal protections for those inferior officers 'with limited duties and no policymaking or administrative authority,’” they wrote. “According to the MSPB, that half-sentence radically cabined [U.S. v. Perkins] and its progeny to a small subset of civil servants. It bears emphasis: the MSPB’s test for Article II firings—that the [1978 Civil Service Reform Act] may apply only to those with ‘limited duties’—will have enormous ramifications.”

The two former immigration judges have asked the circuit court as a whole to hear their case, rather than the traditional three-judge panel. Like the legal challenge to President Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs, which the Federal Circuit heard en banc last year and the Supreme Court invalidated in February, the judges’ case is the first of many such lawsuits, as administration officials’ citation of “Article II” as sole justification for employee removals last year was widespread.

“This appeal is the tip of the iceberg,” attorneys for the fired judges wrote. “The executive branch has fired numerous other civil servants like petitioners, including as many as 100 immigration judges, employees previously assigned to Special Counsel Jack Smith, and prosecutors who handled January 6 cases. The abuses have been egregious: In July 2025, the government fired a career prosecutor apparently because she is the daughter of [former FBI Director Robert Mueller], whom the president views as a vocal critic.”

In a filing Monday, six Senate Democrats—Sens. Chris Van Hollen, Md., Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, both Va., Gary Peters, Mich., and Andy Kim, N.J.—lent their support to the judges’ request. They argued that the MSPB ruling effectively usurps Congress’ authority to insulate inferior officers from political interference.

“The Merit Systems Protection Board’s decision poses serious consequences for the constitutional systems of separation of powers and checks and balances, and it will affect thousands of federal workers, many of whom are constituents of amici,” they wrote. “The board’s decision, if left standing, would subvert the constitutional authority of the Congress to enact any legislation governing inferior officers in the executive branch. This defies over 140 years of Supreme Court precedent and gives the president unchecked authority to take any action regarding inferior officers, constrained only by the few express limitations stated in the Constitution.”

If the court agrees, that means the case would be heard by all 11 active judges on the Federal Circuit bench. A three-judge panel has not yet been assigned.

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CyberCorps summer internships canceled by cybersecurity agency amid DHS funding lapse

David DiMolfetta — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 12:42:49 -0400

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency reversed a decision to onboard summer interns participating in a government scholarship program for cyber talent amid an ongoing funding lapse inside the Department of Homeland Security, according to emails obtained by Nextgov/FCW.

The CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service program provides college tuition and a stipend to awardees, who, in return, commit to working in a government cybersecurity role upon graduation. It’s backed by the Office of Personnel Management and the National Science Foundation, the latter of which awards scholarships that provide up to three years of support to undergraduate and graduate participants, including Ph.D candidates.

Over the last year, the longstanding pipeline was hampered by broader Trump-era moves to reduce the size and scope of the federal workforce. Many hiring and internship onboarding programs did not take place as expected, leaving scholars without work and under a looming deadline to fulfill program requirements or have to pay back their scholarships.

After multiple outlets, including Nextgov/FCW, covered challenges that scholars were facing under the program’s uncertainty, OPM announced plans to pursue a “mass deferment” of job placement deadlines for the cornerstone program, and CISA soon followed with its own plans to make around 100 internship opportunities available.

But DHS has now been unfunded for about two months, amid a partisan stalemate over immigration enforcement reforms. The cyberdefense agency, which is housed in DHS, is “unable to bring any [Scholarship for Service] interns onboard this summer given the impacts of the federal funding lapse,” according to one of the emails sent to a recipient. “Thank you again for your interest in CISA and we hope to be an option for you next year.”

Another email undersigned by a CISA official told planned program participants that, due to the DHS funding situation, “we will be shifting our focus away from SFS summer internships.”

“As of right now, there will be no SFS summer interns,” it adds. “I profusely apologize for the run-around this process has now given you two years in a row.”

The move is a major setback for students who had secured internships after months of confusion and uncertainty about their job outcomes.

Scholarship terms stipulate that graduates must secure a qualifying job approved by OPM within 18 months of completing their studies. If they don’t meet that deadline, their scholarship funding converts into a loan, obligating them to repay the full amount they received.

Nextgov/FCW has asked CISA for comment.

DHS employees were called back to the office this week, after President Donald Trump ordered the department to use funds from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to pay civilian employees and their furloughed colleagues who hadn’t received pay throughout the shutdown.

Due to its current cash issues, CISA is unable to cover costs beyond employee salaries, according to an email Acting Director Nick Andersen sent to staff on Monday that was obtained by Nextgov/FCW. The email specified that any non-salary expenditures now require an exception under the Antideficiency Act, which governs how agencies use their congressionally appropriated funds.

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OPM seeks cybersecurity talent to join Tech Force

Natalie Alms — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 18:33:01 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management is now expressly recruiting cybersecurity employees through the U.S. Tech Force, which the Trump administration launched last year after pushing out over 19,500 tech, data and cyber government workers from across various agencies.

Recruits will work across the federal government for two-year terms. OPM set an initial goal of hiring a 1,000-person cohort when it began the program last winter. Many agencies participating in Tech Force are currently in the final stages of hiring, according to an OPM spokesperson, who said that cyber hires will also be part of the initial cohort.

The government has long struggled to recruit and retain the cyber talent it needs to protect critical systems, although that workforce hasn’t been spared from cuts under the Trump administration’s aggressive downsizing.

The government is looking to hire software engineers, data scientists and product managers to join the Tech Force in addition to cybersecurity talent. Last month, OPM also launched a dedicated NASA Force within the larger program to place fellows at the space agency.

Twenty-plus private companies are collaborating with the administration on the program by providing training and mentorship opportunities. Those companies will also nominate their own employees to do government stints as managers for the Tech Force, a setup that’s raised a host of ethics and conflict of interest concerns, as these managers will remain employed by and on leave from their private sector companies while working for the government.

Scott Kupor, the head of OPM, has emphasized the importance of making it easier for professionals to move in and out of the public sector during their careers and pitched the Tech Force as a way to create those opportunities, as well as bring more young people into the government’s workforce.

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Trump’s federal workforce changes cost the economy more than $165.6B, analysis finds

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:17:35 -0400

The Trump administration’s reforms to the federal government cost the U.S. economy more than $165.6 billion, according to a new estimate from the Partnership for Public Service.

“This is an administration that has claimed that it is trying to reduce waste, and yet the choices that it has made have created phenomenally larger waste,” said Max Stier — the president and CEO of the good government group, which has been critical of the president’s overhauls to the government workforce — during a press call on April 9.

One of the largest individual sources of the costs is nearly $53.2 billion tied to disengaged civil servants. Researchers relied on a Gallup finding that disengaged employees cost their organizations about 34% of their salaries, along with the percentage of disengaged federal employees in a 2025 Partnership survey.

The Partnership conducted its poll after the Office of Personnel Management nixed the 2025 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which annually measures civil servants’ engagement and morale, in order to make changes in compliance with the president’s anti-diversity executive orders. Officials, however, acknowledged that their survey findings are not directly comparable to past FEVS data, as the sample size of the Partnership's poll was more than 10,000 while OPM’s survey covers the entire federal workforce.

Other cost estimates in the analysis include:

More than $4.5 billion to pay individuals who left government under the deferred resignation program, through which participants generally received pay and benefits for several months while on leave.
Nearly $764 million to provide severance pay for more than 10,000 agency employees who were laid off due to a reduction in force.
Nearly $444 million to cover administrative leave for more than 20,000 newly hired and promoted civil servants who were still in their one- or two-year probationary periods when they were fired. While the removals of many of these individuals were temporarily blocked after court challenges, which is why they received administrative pay, those orders were ultimately overruled.

The Partnership also reported that cuts to grants from science agencies, such as the EPA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health, have cost the economy approximately $94.6 billion. Researchers determined that number based on a 2024 study that found every dollar invested in NIH yielded $2.56 in economic activity, which they then multiplied by the amount of unspent funding from terminated grants issued by various agencies.

Brandon Lardy, the Partnership’s data director, said during the April 9 press briefing that researchers relied on data from government agencies and congressional committees to develop their estimates but also stressed that there are challenges to measuring the consequences of government management changes.

“We do really try to emphasize that this is a conservative estimate,” he said. “There are lots of additional costs that just simply aren't quantifiable. We really tried to follow where there was actually data available to quantify the costs.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment; however, administration officials have argued that downsizing the civil service and cutting government spending are necessary to reduce federal spending.

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FEMA came up with a goal to cut half its staff without a plan to get there, records show

Eric Katz — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 17:16:12 -0400

The government’s emergency response agency developed a topline figure to which it would slash its workforce before it developed an analysis of how to reach that total, according to new documents and testimony from a lawsuit challenging an initial round of cuts, leaving staff to then reverse engineer a pathway to implement the potential reductions.

Officials at the Homeland Security Department tasked Federal Emergency Management Agency leadership with developing various staffing cut scenarios, including one that would have led to the dismissal of half of FEMA’s workforce, new court records show. That plan was ultimately developed and sent back to DHS, as well as the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management, Karen Evans, the senior official currently serving as FEMA’s said in a recent deposition.

Excerpts of the deposition and internal communications on the staffing cuts were recently made public in court filings.

“We didn’t have a plan,” Evans said of the goal to get FEMA to 11,383 employees, roughly half of FEMA’s existing workforce. “That’s why I was tasking the plan.”

Evans, who replaced David Richardson as head of FEMA on Dec. 1, requested that other top officials at FEMA develop a process for meeting the already determined staff cut goal. Richardson had spearheaded the analysis that led to that figure based on “mission essential functions,” Evans said, though she acknowledged the final call on the plan—which she said included various options—came from her parent agency.

“I was told to include an option that would include a 50% cut,” she said, recalling a conversation she had with then-DHS Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Guy.

Evans sent that plan to DHS on Dec. 4 and it was subsequently passed on to OMB and OPM.

The FEMA chief was deposed on March 31 after a chaotic court hearing in which attorneys for the Trump administration contradicted previous, written testimony Evans had provided over the provenance of the staffing cut goals. A federal judge ordered top DHS and FEMA officials to provide depositions, and thousands of pages of related documents, to straighten out the discrepancy.

A union representing FEMA employees brought the lawsuit after the agency terminated hundreds of workers by declining to renew their expiring two or four-year contracts. The non-renewed employees were all part of FEMA’s Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery workforce, who serve in the short-term stints that are typically renewed. The employees, however, have been systematically dismissed at the end of their agreements since late last year, with an exception for the winter storms that hit much of the country in January.

CORE employees are often the first to deploy following a disaster and, according to the lawsuit, some of the terminated workers were in the middle of hurricane relief deployments. FEMA has so far slashed more than 1,000 of the employees since 2024, or about 10% of that workforce. FEMA also employs about 4,000 reservists, who serve on a part-time basis and only activate during disasters, and around 5,000 permanent, full-time staff.

Work on the plan to implement widespread staffing cuts is “put on hold” to implement the CORE non-renewal plan, Evans said. She suggested the shedding of COREs was related only to right-sizing the workforce and not necessarily connected to the larger workforce plans.

In February, however, Victoria Barton, a FEMA spokesperson, said while there was no plan to eliminate COREs en masse, the agency in recent years had been "inflating the workforce beyond sustainable levels” and the reductions would address that. She added the cuts Evans implemented to that workforce "brought a level of scrutiny and accountability" to the agency that it had been lacking.

Evans, DHS human resources chief Roland Edwards and FEMA HR head La’Toya Prieur all confirmed in their depositions that various DHS officials were involved in the decision making related to CORE non-renewals, attorneys for the plaintiffs said.

Plaintiffs in the case released the testimony and documents in asking the judge to compel further document disclosure and depositions from the government. Evans revealed that she chatted with DHS officials, including former Secretary Kristi Noem and her top advisor Corey Lewandowski, on Signal and using personal devices. The government stated those conversations were not related to the case. Evans also produced her own daily notes that she took on the job, but self-redacted them to screen for what she deemed to be inappropriate for disclosure. The plaintiffs are also seeking an unredacted copy of those notes.

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