Federal Newscast

President Trump formally transmitted Markwayne Mullin’s nomination to be Homeland Security Secretary to the Senate yesterday. Last week, Trump announced he would have Mullin, the junior Senator from Oklahoma replace Kristi Noem, who’s expected to step down as Secretary at the end of this month. But Mullin still requires confirmation and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee C...

Federal employees’ retirement applications are continuing to flood the Office of Personnel Management. In February, another 31,000 retirement claims entered the agency’s systems. That puts OPM’s Retirement Services center at yet another record high of pending applications — now reaching above 65,000 cases with pensions that are yet-to-be finalized. That’s an 88% increase since OPM’s inve...

A plan to limit when federal employees can cancel their union du  es if officially off the table. The Federal Labor Relations Authority is rescinding a previous proposal from 2022, which would have given federal employees only a once-per-year opportunity to cancel dues payments. Since 2020, dues-paying federal employees have had the option to cancel automatic deductions for union dues at...

OpenAI and the Defense Department have adjusted the deal they made just days ago for use of the company’s artificial intelligence tools in classified environments. The changes center around prohibiting use of the Open AI’s technology for domestic surveillance, autonomous weapons systems and autonomous decision-making. These are similar to the safeguards Anthropic had insisted on that tanked its de...

A new bill would prevent federal retirees who survived domestic violence from needing to share personal details with their abusers during the retirement process. Currently, retired feds must get written consent from their current or former spouse if they update their retirement benefits; which can mean exposing personal contact information to abusers. But the “Federal Retirement Safety Act” sponso...

Federal employees saw only small growth in most of their retirement accounts in February. All but one of the funds in the Thrift Savings Plan came in with positive returns for the month, but the increase was notably lower across the board. The I Fund, for example, saw the biggest increase of more than 6% in February, but that was much lower than the 12% increase it saw in January. The C Fund...

Tens of thousands of employees have been working unpaid through the Department of Homeland Security shutdown. But thousands of others across DHS will be getting a paycheck on time. The American Federation of Government Employees is urging Congress to immediately compensate all employees affected by the DHS shutdown. The union is calling for the passage of the Shutdown Fairness Act, which would pay...

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden is blocking the Trump administration’s nominee to lead both U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency. Wyden says that Lieutenant General Joshua Rudd, who currently serves as the deputy commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, lacks the experience needed to immediately step into the dual leadership role. The lawmaker added that when it comes to U.S. cyber...

While nearly all major federal agencies saw staffing declines in the first half of 2025, the size of those separations varied. NASA’s workforce, along with civilian staff at the Defense Department, declined by less than 5%. But the Education Department lost more than 20% of its workforce in the same timeframe. That’s all according to new data analysis from the Government Accountability Office. GAO...

The nation’s highest court is adopting new technology to prevent conflicts of interest. The Supreme Court says it is now using newly developed software to assist in identifying potential conflicts for the justices. The software will run automated recusal checks that compare information about parties and attorneys in a case with lists created by each Justice’s chamber. The Court’s Office of Informa...

A new director with both military command and education experience will take over Defense Department schools beginning next month. Paul Craft, an Ohio Army National Guard officer with more than three decades of service, will replace Beth Schiavino-Narvaez, who brought extensive public education leadership experience to the role. The abrupt leadership change signals a shift in educational prio...

The Treasury Department is highlighting best practices for using artificial intelligence within the financial sector. They include an artificial intelligence lexicon and a financial services AI risk management framework. The resources were developed by the Artificial Intelligence Executive Oversight Group, a Treasury-led partnership between financial institutions and regulators. The voluntary guid...

Six Democrats in the Senators are asking the Government Accountability Office to further investigate whether the Commerce Department broke the law when it dismantled the Minority Business Development Agency or MBDA. Senators Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ben Ray Luján and others say they are concerned that Commerce defied federal court orders when political leaders terminated the fundin...

Some senior political appointees, including the vice president, will continue to see a long-standing freeze on their salaries. The Office of Personnel Management announced that pay rates will continue to be capped for certain Executive Schedule employees. Political appointees in Schedules C and G, however, are exempted from the pay freeze. Certain higher-paid positions have continued to see their...

The Defense Department is bringing in industry experts to help overhaul its acquisition process. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the new Business Operators for National Defense program, or BOND, has already engaged over 100 industry experts, including dozens of former CEOs, COOs and CIOs already advising senior Pentagon officials. “BOND embeds elite private sector patriots, leaders with decade...

The IRS pulled the plug on its free, online tax filing platform. Members of the Senate say the agency's partnership with tax filing companies hasn’t stepped up. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Angus King (I-Maine) are asking the IRS what it’s doing to promote its Free File program with tax-preparation companies. The program saw a peak of about five million taxpayers in 2004, but has s...

The Space Force has surpassed its fiscal 2026 recruiting goal just five months into the year. The service has already exceeded its recruiting goal by 25% for recruits who have shipped to basic military training or entered the delayed entry program. Despite that progress, service officials warn the current force is too small to meet growing national security demands. Chief Master Sergeant of the Sp...

A federal employee union head is stepping down after leading it for more than 14 years. Lee Saunders is retiring as president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Despite the name, it also represents federal employees in the departments of Justice, Transportation, Agriculture and Veterans Affairs as well as the Library of Congress. Saunders will step...

Veterans Affairs is exploring hundreds of potential uses for artificial intelligence. More than half of them would impact its health-care mission. The VA says AI-assisted colonoscopies are leading to better detection of tumors. It also says AI helps mitigate the risk of opioid overdose and suicide among patients. The department says more than 130 use cases are currently being deployed across its o...

Senator Ron Wyden is pledging to keep his hold on the nominee to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Wyden says he will continue to object to Sean Plankey’s nomination until CISA releases a 2022 report on security flaws in the U.S. telecommunications system. Wyden previously held up Plankey’s nomination for much of last year over the same issue.  See Privacy Policy at h...

The Defense Department says it’s cutting ties with Harvard University. The Pentagon says this will be the final school year for its graduate level professional military education programs affiliated with the university. DoD’s Harvard fellowships and certificate programs will end too. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says he made the decision because of what he calls “globalist and radical ideologies...

About 17 veterans died by suicide each day in 2023. That’s nearly 6,400 for the entire year. An annual report from the Department of Veterans Affairs shows overall veteran suicides are decreasing. More than half of veterans who died by suicide did not receive VA health care in the last year of their life. Suicide rates are elevated for veterans ages 18 to 34 and those experiencing homelessness, he...

Taxpayers for Common Sense, a fiscal watchdog group, says the Trump administration’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative could cost as much as $3.6 trillion over the next 20 years, far exceeding the White House’s projected $175 billion. The group also argues the effort faces “insurmountable” technical hurdles that could prevent it from reliably defending the United States against nuclear threat...

Law enforcement staffing at federal agencies varied between fiscal years 2020 and 2024. But a new Government Accountability Office report shows the Veterans Health Administration saw a major uptick in law enforcement staffing during that period, going from 4,699 officers in 2020 to 6,281 by the end of 2024. VHA was an outlier as most other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies either h...

The I fund in the Thrift Savings Plan continues to outpace every other investment account. In January, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board says the I fund increased by almost 6% as compared to December. No other TSP fund increased by more than 3.11%.  Overall, every TSP fund saw a month over month increase in January. For the past 12 months, the I fund increased by over 35%, w...