Federal Newscast

The Defense Department failed to pass its annual audit once again. Auditors found 26 material weaknesses and “two significant deficiencies related to the DoD’s internal controls over financial reporting.” The review covered the department’s $4.7 trillion in assets and another $4.7 trillion in liabilities. The Pentagon has failed every audit since launching its first agency-wide review in 2018. Con...

House Republicans are seeking annual reauthorization of key programs at the Veterans Affairs Department. Top lawmakers on the House VA Committee are leading a series of bills that would reauthorize the department’s Veteran Readiness and Employment program. This is the third wave of VA reauthorization bills lawmakers have introduced. The legislation would also move the Labor Department’s Veter...

There’s a new recruitment opportunity at Health and Human Services. The agency has just launched the Roy Wilkins Fellowship. It’s reserved for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, who are interested in public service. Many of HHS’s divisions will host career fairs to promote the new fellowship, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease C...

The Pentagon inspector general found the Defense Health Agency failed to issue finalized guidance defining roles, responsibilities and access-to-care standards after reorganizing the military health system. The average wait for urgent medical appointments at military medical treatment facilities outside the United States stretched as long as 21 days in some locations, while routine appointmen...

The Pentagon inspector general found the Army and Navy miscalculated the number of low-scoring recruits entering the military through their preparatory programs. The watchdog found the services used recruits’ improved test scores instead of the scores they had when they first signed up. As a result, both services exceeded the legal limits of recruits with low test scores entering the program. The&...

More than 60% of the government’s security clearance data last year was either inaccurate or incomplete. That’s according to a recent review conducted by the Government Accountability Office. In a new report, GAO says delays and issues with IT systems continue to make the security clearance process a top management challenge in the federal government. The issue has remained on GAO’s High-Risk List...

Federal retirement numbers at the Office of Personnel Management are continuing to skyrocket. In November, OPM took in another 23,000 applications from retiring employees. That’s on top of more than 20,000 that entered OPM’s systems in October. Together, those numbers mean retirement applications are triple the volume they were at this time last year. In total, OPM’s retirement inventory is now cl...

The House has passed a $900 bill defense policy bill, which includes a 3.8% pay raise for service members. The must-pass legislation now heads to the Senate. Once it clears the chamber, the bill will go to President Trump for his signature. The bill seeks to streamline the way the Pentagon buys its capabilities. Congressional leaders said the legislation would deliver "the most significant acquisi...

Recent changes to the Postal Service’s network could mean slower deliveries of prescription drugs in the mail. A study from the Brookings Institution finds 6% of Americans live far away from a brick-and-mortar pharmacy, rely heavily on mail-order prescriptions and live in areas impacted by USPS consolidation. Brookings finds nearly half of all Americans face at least one of those scenarios. USPS t...

The nation’s largest federal employee union is urging Congress to vote against the House rule for the 2026 defense policy bill. The American Federation of Government Employees says negotiators removed a bipartisan House provision that would have restored collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of Defense Department civilian employees. The union says removing that language means the...

More discouraging news for the Pentagon’s prospects of obtaining a clean financial audit by the current 2028 deadline. A new evaluation by the Defense Department inspector general finds the department’s plan to remediate one of its key, longstanding material weaknesses, an inability to keep track of government property in the possession of contractors, doesn’t appear to be working. DoD intended to...

More moves to reorganize the Army take effect today. The new Army Western Hemisphere Command will officially come into being with its headquarters at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The new organization combines the existing U.S. Army North, U.S. Army South and Army Forces Command under one umbrella before those organizations are formally disestablished next October. The new command will also absorb t...

The Office of Personnel Management is requiring all federal supervisors to enroll in a new training program on performance management. A new memo says the mandatory training will cover how to both reward and discipline employees, as well as how to create effective performance plans. All supervisors are required to complete OPM's new training by February 9, 2026.  See Privacy Policy at https:/...

Federal executives may soon see even more changes coming from the Trump administration. The Office of Personnel Management is now encouraging agencies to consider possible reassignments of Senior Executive Service members. In a new memo, OPM argues that the SES has not served as a “mobile corps” of managers, and members are instead being “entrenched” at agencies. The new memo comes after...

Most funds in the Thrift Savings Plan saw minimal growth in November with 15 of 16 coming in higher than where they finished in October. But no fund saw an increase greater than 0.64% for the past 30 days. And only the S fund saw a month over month decline, dropping 0.45%. The I Fund remains the biggest winner for the year with a total increase of 28.54%, while four L Funds also produced retu...

Federal agencies are trying to eliminate underutilized space in their buildings. But a watchdog report finds the Postal Service generally isn’t asking those same questions. The USPS inspector general’s office finds the agency hasn’t collected space utilization data for more than 60% of its properties. USPS operates more than 34,000 properties across the country. The IG’s office says that by not co...

Customer satisfaction with benefits and services provided by the federal government is higher than it’s been in nearly two decades. That’s despite a tumultuous year where agencies have seen a major downsizing of the federal workforce. Scores are higher on average, but the latest scorecard from the American Customer Satisfaction Index does show a few agencies are seeing lower scores. The Offic...

The Trump administration says it’s finished updating federal employee records to remove some of the negative consequences of this year’s mass firing of probationary employees. Federal agencies say the personnel records have all been updated to reflect the fact that those workers were not fired for performance reasons. That step was ordered by a federal judge, who found agencies wrongly asserted th...

The Federal Aviation Administration is giving 776 air traffic controllers and technicians a $10,000 bonus for working during the 44-day partial government shutdown. The bonuses will be sent to those employees who maintained perfect attendance during the shutdown. Recipients will receive an automated notification this week and receive their payment no later than December 9. The FAA's...

● A new survey finds that nearly every service member living in privatized military housing has experienced serious problems in their home and many of those issues go unresolved. The Change the Air Foundation recently found 97% of service members reported at least one significant problem in their military-provided home, with mold, mildew, and water damage cited most frequently. Out of 3,401 respon...

The Army has selected nine installations as potential sites for microreactor power plants under its next-generation Janus nuclear power program. Meanwhile, the Defense Innovation Unit issued a solicitation for commercial advanced nuclear technologies to support the effort. The nine sites the Army identified through comprehensive analysis include Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Redstone Arsenal in...

U.S. Cyber Command has a new chief artificial intelligence officer. Brig. Gen. Reid Novotny, who was tapped to serve in the role, said his priority will be ensuring that AI strengthens the nation’s cyber forces and improves decision-making advantage. Novotny previously served as the National Guard Bureau’s director of intelligence and cyber effects operations and most recently as the Office o...

Federal employees will be able to contribute more to their Thrift Savings Plan accounts next year. The IRS increased the maximum annual contribution limit to $24,500, which is a $1,000 increase over 2025. Additionally, employees aged 50 or older can save more money through their catch-up contributions. And if employees are aged 60 to 63, they can save even more with a higher catch u...

A federal union is suing the Trump administration for not handing over a list of employees that agencies might be targeting to remove their job protections. The new lawsuit from the National Treasury Employees Union alleges that the Office of Personnel Management violated the Freedom of Information Act by not providing those details. The union’s legal action comes after the Trump administration ea...

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is trying to save the Navy Reserve Center system. They say THE provision in the Senate version of the fiscal 2026 defense policy bill would shutter 107 commands that provide administrative support and serve as home for approximately 48,000 Navy reservists across the country. In a letter to the House and Senate Armed Services committees, the lawmakers said...