A federal judge in San Francisco is temporarily blocking the State Department from finalizing hundreds of employee layoffs.

Judge Susan Illston approved a temporary restraining order on Thursday, preventing the department from officially terminating more than 200 employees, most of them Foreign Service officers.

Separately, federal employee unions are asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to reverse more layoffs than agencies have allowed under a spending deal that ended the recent government shutdown.

The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association filed the emergency request for a temporary restraining order to bar the “imminent and unlawful execution” of reduction in force notices the State Department sent this summer.

“The severe threats to the public presented by the imminent State Department actions necessitate a temporary pause to protect the status quo for plaintiffs and the employees they represent who are adversely impacted by these imminent separations,” the emergency request states.

The emergency request is part of an ongoing lawsuit that unions filed on the eve of the government shutdown, which blocked the Trump administration from conducting widespread layoffs during a lapse in congressional funds.

The amended lawsuit states that several agencies, including the State Department, aren’t fully adhering to a provision in the shutdown-ending spending bill that temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out layoffs.

The nonprofit Democracy Forward, which is also part of the lawsuit, said the amended lawsuit seeks to reverse “other unlawful RIF actions” at the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration, as well as the departments of Education and Defense.

“Those RIFs would violate the federal legislation that ended the federal government shutdown, which prohibits implementation of any RIFs through January 30,” the amended complaint states.

The continuing resolution Congress passed on Nov. 12 states that “any reduction in force proposed, noticed, initiated, executed, implemented, or otherwise taken by an executive agency between October 1, 2025, and the date of enactment, shall have no force or effect.”

It also states that between Nov. 12, 2025 and Jan. 30, 2026, “no federal funds may be used to initiate, carry out, implement, or otherwise notice a reduction in force to reduce the number of employees within any department.”

Agencies, however, have followed a narrower interpretation of the stopgap spending bill, and have only reinstated federal employees who received RIF notices between Oct. 1 and Nov. 12. The amended lawsuit states that interpretation of the continuing resolution “is significantly under-inclusive.”

Agencies recently told a federal court that they rescinded shutdown-era RIF notices for more than 3,600 employees.

The State Department sent RIF notices to nearly 1,350 employees in July. Most of those employees were officially separated from the agency in September.

But this Friday, Dec. 5, the department plans to officially remove nearly 250 Foreign Service employees and several civil service employees whose separation dates were postponed, because they recently gave birth or faced medical issues.

The State Department claims that the continuing resolution’s layoff protections only apply to RIF notices that went out after Oct. 1.

“Defendants are wrong,” the amended complaint states. “The plain language of the continuing resolution prohibits any actions implementing any RIFs of any employees at any agency between November 12, 2025 and January 30, 2026, and requires recission of any previously issued RIF notices (regardless of when they were issued) if the RIFs were implemented during the shutdown.”

The amended lawsuit also takes issue with how the State Department modified the official separation date for impacted employees.

Foreign Service employees were originally told they would be separated from the agency on Nov. 10,  when the agency was still affected by the government shutdown. But on that date, employees received a notice from the department’s human resources offices that said they would remain on administrative leave so the agency could correct “administrative errors.”

On Monday evening, employees received a notice that said they will be officially separated from the State Department this Friday.

“The RIF notices were not reissued, and employees received nothing further from the State Department regarding the now-expired RIF notices until December 1, 2025,” the amended lawsuit states.

The State Department’s notice to employees cites “formal written guidance” from the Office of Management and Budget and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel regarding RIFs that had been issued prior to the shutdown, but further implemented during or after the shutdown. The unions leading the lawsuit say that formal written guidance hasn’t been made publicly available.

“During the shutdown, the State Department continued to implement the stages of these RIFs in preparation for final separation of the employees, including by processing personnel paperwork in advance of the planned separations,” the amended complaint states.

The unions claim that without a temporary restraining order, State Department employees and their families will suffer “irreparable harm,” including a loss of income and health insurance benefits.

“For many of these employees, the imminent loss of employment means a sustained loss of income and benefits in a job market already flooded with unemployed former State Department and USAID employees,” the amended complaint states.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement that “Congress clearly stated that no federal employees should lose their jobs due to a reduction-in-force for the duration of the continuing resolution.”

“This means that no RIF should be issued or acted upon, and any RIF terminations that occurred during the shutdown must be reversed,” Kelley said.

AFSA President John Dinkelman said in a statement that these “unlawful separations reveal a callous indifference to the rule of law and the people who carry out America’s diplomatic mission every day.”

The post Federal judge blocks imminent State Dept layoffs, as unions seek to reverse RIFs at other agencies first appeared on Federal News Network.

The State Department’s diplomatic workforce is feeling overburdened, under-resourced and more likely to leave in the next few years, given sweeping changes happening under the Trump administration, according to a survey conducted by its union.

In a survey of more than 2,100 active-duty Foreign Service employees, the American Foreign Service Association found that 98% of respondents reported reduced morale this year.

About 86% of respondents said workplace changes since January have affected their ability to advance U.S. diplomatic priorities.

Before the Trump administration, about 17,000 active-duty Foreign Service officers worked for the State Department. AFSA estimates that nearly 25% of its workforce left this year — when counting layoffs, retirements and those who accepted deferred resignation offers.

Nearly a third of survey respondents said they have changed their career plans since the beginning of this year.

More than 80% of respondents said they entered the Service intending to serve 20 years or more — but now about 22% of them say they plan to leave the State Department within the next year or two.

AFSA President John Dinkelman said in a call Wednesday that survey results demonstrate a “workplace crisis” at the State Department that will take “years, if not decades, to repair.”

“When we undermine the Foreign Service, we undermine America’s ability to prevent conflict, support our allies, and protect our citizens abroad. In short, we weaken our global leadership,” Dinkelman said.

The State Department sent layoff notices to nearly 1,350 of its employees this summer. Those reductions in force will be finalized, once nearly 250 Foreign Service officers officially separate from the agency this Friday.

The department carried out a massive agency reorganization this year, consolidating and eliminating hundreds of offices.

After sending the mass layoff notices in July, the department began hiring new Foreign Service officers this fall.

Some candidates in the hiring pipeline had to retake a new version of the Foreign Service Officer Test that had been vetted by the Trump administration. The State Department has also made “fidelity” to the administration’s policy goals part of the new criteria to determine if Foreign Service officers are eligible for promotions.

Dinkelman said that the expertise of the Foreign Service “is not easily rebuilt,” and that the State Department will have less experienced diplomats filling its depleted ranks.

“While we certainly will be able to find individuals to enter the service and begin again, those individuals who come in in 2026, ‘27 and ‘28 will not have the expertise, that will have been lost in these previous years, for decades to come,” Dinkelman said.

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement that Secretary of State Marco Rubio “values candid insights from patriotic Americans who have chosen to serve their country.”

“In fact, this administration reorganized the entire State Department to ensure those on the front lines – the regional bureaus and the embassies – are in a position to impact policies,” Pigott said. “What we will not tolerate is people using their positions to actively undermine the duly elected president’s objectives.”

AFSA conducted the survey to gather feedback that its members have not been able to share with agency leadership.

Federal News Network first reported this summer that the Trump administration will not conduct the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey this year, a governmentwide scorecard that tracks employee satisfaction.

“We knew that AFSA had a responsibility to step into this breach,” Dinkelman said. “This report offers the first independent snapshot of the Foreign Service during a period of sustained institutional stress.”

The 2024 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government scorecard, which parses FEVS data and is tracked by the Partnership for Public Service, shows the State Department received a 62.8 satisfaction score from employees — and ranked 16th for employee satisfaction among 18 large federal agencies.

About 78% of respondents said they are operating under reduced budgets this year, while 64% said key projects and initiatives are being delayed or suspended.

“I’ve served in hardship posts and multiple unaccompanied tours, but I never expected by my own government to openly disparage public service or the work of public servants,” an anonymous Foreign Service officer told AFSA.

Rohit Nepal, AFSA’s vice president for the State Department, said active-duty Foreign Service officers are being asked to take on more work from offices that have been eliminated, following the reorganization.

More than 60% of survey respondents agreed they are managing “significantly higher workloads due to staffing losses.”

“We’re talking about offices working on some of our highest priorities That could be the war in Gaza, Ukraine, our strategic competition with China. In other words, these folks are being asked to do more without the necessary resources to actually accomplish the job. It’s taking a toll on them,” Nepal said.

Nepal, who is an active-duty Foreign Service officer, said a hiring freeze this year led to key positions going unfilled during his last post in Amman, Jordan.

“We found ourselves unable to hire, even while we were dealing with an exchange of regular Iranian missile exchanges over Jordanian skies during the Israel-Iran war,” he said.

Nepal said Foreign Service officers are “reading the political tea leaves,” and avoiding certain types of jobs.

Nepal said a junior public diplomacy officer told him that they weren’t going to bid on jobs in public diplomacy, because “clearly we don’t care about PD anymore.”

Nepal said another Foreign Service officer with years of experience on refugee and human rights issues told him that “there’s no place for people like her in the department right now.”

“Let’s be clear: American diplomacy is weaker because of this politicization. Talented diplomats aren’t being selected for jobs or are not stepping forward because they believe they can’t get a fair shake in this environment,” Nepal said.

The report calls on Congress to intervene with sweeping changes happening to the agency, and that lawmakers “should make clear that career professionals cannot be punished, reassigned, or dismissed for political reasons.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), co-founder of the Senate Foreign Service Caucus, said in a statement that the report shows “a year of relentless attacks by the administration against these dedicated public servants has left our diplomatic corps in crisis — a vulnerability that our adversaries are all too happy to exploit.”

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, former Director General of the Foreign Service and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement that “AFSA’s data confirms we’re asking our diplomats to do more with less precisely when robust engagement is needed most.”

The post ‘A workplace crisis:’ Nearly all Foreign Service employees report lower morale in union-led survey first appeared on Federal News Network.

The State Department is telling some employees targeted by mass layoffs this summer that their official separation date is imminent — and is not affected by a shutdown-ending spending deal that forced some agencies to rescind layoff notices.

The department’s human resources office, in a notice sent Monday evening, said Foreign Service employees who received reduction-in-force notices on July 11 will be officially separated from the agency this Friday, Dec. 5.

According to the Bureau of Global Talent Management, State Department attorneys determined that a recent stopgap spending bill passed by Congress, which ended the longest government shutdown, does not require the agency to rescind any RIF notices that were sent before the shutdown.

“Following formal written guidance from both the Office of Management and Budget and Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, the Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser has determined that completing the reductions in force (RIFs) noticed prior to the lapse in appropriations does not violate the Antideficiency Act (ADA) or any other restriction within HR 5371,” the memo obtained by Federal News Network states. “Given this determination, the Department will finalize your separation or involuntary retirement on Friday, December 5.”

The department, as part of this update, has modified the official separation date for impacted employees.

Foreign Service employees were originally told they would be separated from the agency on Nov. 10,  when the agency was still affected by the government shutdown. Those employees will now be separated from the State Department on Dec. 5

In a separate notice, Global Talent Management said the State Department is extending administrative leave for all Foreign Service employees who were scheduled for separation as part of the RIF.

“We are reviewing the administrative errors in all SF-50s issued on Friday, November 7, to ensure that all information is accurate,” the notice states, referring to a federal employee’s official employment record.

It’s not clear what administrative errors the department intends to correct. An employee’s SF-50 form shared with Federal News Network shows that Lew Olowski, the department’s top HR official, approved the RIFs to go into effect on Nov. 10.

A State Department spokesperson told Federal News Network that, “since the State Department’s lawful reduction in force (RIF) process was commenced and initiated well before the lapse in appropriations, the eliminated positions are not impacted by the language in the recent continuing resolution.”

“Legal opinions published by both OMB and DOJ confirm that outcome,” the spokesperson said. “The State Department will proceed with executing the RIF process as planned.”

A Foreign Service officer who received a RIF notice told Federal News Network that the State Department “can’t just extend admin leave” to set a new separation date.

The Foreign Service officer, who requested anonymity because they were not cleared to speak to the media, said moving the original Nov. 10 separation date amounts to a “de facto reinstatement,” and that the department would need to issue entirely new RIF notices and provide at least a 60-day notice for that new separation date.

“This entire action just seems patently unlawful, and I do not understand how the department plans to get away with it,” the Foreign Service officer said.

By law, each federal employee subject to a RIF “is entitled to a specific written notice at least 60 full days before the effective date of release.”

According to the SF-50 notice, employees eligible for severance will receive a lump-sum payment on Jan. 1, 2026.

The State Department laid off more than 1,300 employees on July 11. It sent RIF notices to more than 1,100 civil service employees and nearly 250 Foreign Service employees who were based in the United States at the time.

Senior department officials later told Congress that the RIF was the largest and most complex workforce reduction of its kind, and that they carried out the layoffs in consultation with the Office of Personnel Management.

Questions about the possibility of reinstatement primarily focused on laid-off Foreign Service officers, who had been on administrative leave for a longer period than their civil service counterparts.

Foreign Service employees who received RIF notices were scheduled to be officially 120 days out from their RIF notices. But civil service employees who received RIF notices had only 60 days before their official separation.  They left the department in early September.

The State Department and several other agencies have rejected calls from laid-off employees, unions and Democratic lawmakers who say more federal employees are eligible for reinstatement than what the Trump administration has allowed.

The American Foreign Service Association said last month that its interpretation of the continuing resolution passed by Congress on Nov. 12 blocks the State Department from moving forward with its layoff notices.

The continuing resolution Congress passed on Nov. 12 states that “any reduction in force proposed, noticed, initiated, executed, implemented, or otherwise taken by an Executive Agency between October 1, 2025, and the date of enactment, shall have no force or effect.”

“We understand that Congress intended for this language to apply to as many federal employees as possible, including those who received layoff notices from the State Department on July 11,” AFSA wrote.

On Tuesday, AFSA said it is working closely with the American Federation of Government Employees and will be pursuing legal action.

“This action flies in the face of the current funding law, which clearly prohibits using any federal resources to carry out layoffs during this period,” AFSA said in a statement. “That includes sending notices, processing paperwork, or taking any step to advance these separations.”

Democratic lawmakers say agencies aren’t reinstating as many federal employees as they should be under the spending deal.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) is leading the push for more RIF rescissions, along with several of his Democratic colleagues.

Kaine was one of eight Democratic senators who broke ranks to pass the stopgap spending bill, only after Republicans agreed to include language that would protect federal employees from layoffs at least through Jan. 30, 2026. Kaine and his colleagues backed standalone legislation during the shutdown that would have also barred the Trump administration from moving ahead with its most recent wave of mass layoffs.

Kaine, along with Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), said the continuing resolution — particularly Section 120 of the stopgap bill — placed a moratorium on RIFs involving federal employees, and that the “moratorium is broad, clear and unequivocal.”

Agencies, however, have followed a narrower interpretation, and have only reinstated federal employees who received RIF notices between Oct 1 and Nov. 12. Agencies told a federal court that they rescinded shutdown-era RIF notices for more than 3,600 employees.

Federal News Network first reported that the Small Business Administration told 77 recently laid-off employees this week that they could get their jobs back, but rescinded that offer a day later.

An SBA spokesperson said in a statement that the agency “has determined that the most recent continuing resolution signed into law does not apply to any RIFs executed by the SBA.”

The Democratic senators told SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler that the agency is “unlawfully pursuing reductions in force,” and that dozens of recently laid-off employees the agency hasn’t reinstated “have a right to continue their employment.”

A group of 35 former General Services Administration employees also called on the agency to rescind their RIF notices, on the grounds that Congress intended to reinstate them.

GSA’s Associate General Counsel Daniel Hall told their attorneys in a Nov. 24 letter that the RIF notices “were issued before and separate from the lapse in appropriations occurring on October 1, 2025, and are outside of the intended scope of the Act and its provisions on RIFs.”

The post State Dept finalizes mass layoffs, says employees won’t be reinstated under shutdown-ending deal first appeared on Federal News Network.

More federal employees who received layoff notices just before the government shutdown are looking to get their jobs back, on the grounds that Congress intended to reinstate them.

Recently laid-off employees at the General Services Administration are calling on the agency to rescind their reduction in force (RIF) notices, citing language in the recently passed continuing resolution that directed agencies to rescind the RIFs.

Attorneys at Gilbert Employment Law, in a letter sent to GSA’s leadership on Wednesday, said their clients, 35 GSA employees who were formally separated from the agency on Oct. 6, should be reinstated.

The GSA employees received their RIF notices on Sept. 24.

The continuing resolution gave agencies until Nov. 18 to notify eligible employees that their RIF notices were being rescinded.

According to the letter, GSA has not sent any RIF rescission notices to the 35 GSA employees, “and has instead taken the position that they will not be reinstated.”

“This is a violation of the statute,” the attorneys wrote.

Guidance from the Office of Personnel Management directed agencies to reinstate employees “affected by a RIF notice issued between October 1, 2025 and November 12, 2025.”

“The clear intent of the Act was to reverse all RIF actions — including separations — taken during the shutdown, not just the issuance of RIF notices,” the attorneys wrote.

Federal News Network has reached out to GSA for comment.

Soon after Congress passed a spending bill last week to end the government shutdown, agencies and unions took a closer look at language ordering agencies to put some layoff notices on hold until the end of January 2026.

The spending deal that Congress passed on Nov. 12 to end the government shutdown states that, “any reduction in force proposed, noticed, initiated, executed, implemented, or otherwise taken by an executive agency between October 1, 2025, and the date of enactment, shall have no force or effect.”

The Small Business Administration told dozens of recently laid-off employees this week that they could get their jobs back, but rescinded that offer a day later.

SBA sent RIF notices to 77 employees on Sept. 29, just before the government shutdown.

An SBA spokesperson told Federal News Network on Tuesday that the agency “has determined that the most recent continuing resolution signed into law does not apply to any RIFs executed by the SBA.”

“Therefore, the RIF in question, affecting 77 positions, remains,” the spokesperson said.

Federal News Network spoke with three SBA employees whose RIFs were briefly rescinded.

The employees said attorneys with the American Federation of Government Employees argued that SBA’s RIF notices were covered by the continuing resolution and should be rescinded, because the separation date for employees falls between Oct. 1 and Jan. 30.

One employee said they were told by their supervisor to still come into work on Wednesday, even though SBA’s most recent message told them the RIF notices were still in effect.

“There still seemed to be confusion,” the employee said.

Other unions are also making the case for reinstatement.

The American Foreign Service Association said last week that its interpretation of the spending deal passed by Congress would block the State Department from moving forward with layoff notices it sent to more than 1,300 employees this summer.

“The shutdown just ended for now, but there were a ton of RIFs that happened during the shutdown,” AFGE General Counsel Thomas Dargon told AFSA members in a virtual meeting Thursday. “AFGE filed a lawsuit over that, and we’ve just been hard at work trying to fight back where we can in the courts.”

The spending package passed by Congress states that between the date of enactment and Jan. 30, 2026, “no federal funds may be used to initiate, carry out, implement or otherwise notice a reduction in force to reduce the number of employees within any department, agency or office of the federal government.”

“We understand that Congress intended for this language to apply to as many federal employees as possible, including those who received layoff notices from the State Department on July 11,” AFSA wrote.

AFSA wrote in a follow-up post that it is awaiting details “on how the continuing resolution will be implemented and what it means for Foreign Service members affected by the July layoffs at State.”

The post Laid-off GSA employees push for reinstatement, citing RIF protections in shutdown-ending deal first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Education Department, in the latest step of the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the agency, has begun transferring its employees to other federal agencies.

The department said Tuesday that it signed six new interagency agreements to transfer some of its programs and employees to the departments of Labor, Interior, State and Health and Human Services, in order “to break up the federal education bureaucracy.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon told employees in an all-hands meeting that the department is soft-launching plans to reassign its work to other parts of the federal government, before calling on Congress to permanently shutter the agency.

McMahon, in a transcript obtained by Federal News Network, told employees that Education is currently transferring its employees out to other agencies “on a temporary basis.”

That temporary reorganization, she said, will give the Education Department a proof-of-concept to show lawmakers. At that point, the Trump administration will call on Congress to pass legislation that will officially shut down the department and codify the reorganization.

The department, she added, has already transferred 13 employees to the Labor Department, “so that we can be more efficient and economical,” and that more interagency agreements will soon be signed to transfer other staff.

McMahon said the Education Department’s budget still covers those 13 detailed employees, and that the Education and Labor Departments are currently “co-managing” them.

McMahon told employees that she has spoken to members of Congress about this reorganization plan, and is planning to move programs out of the Education Department “on a temporary basis” for now. But in the end, she said the Trump administration’s goal is to find enough votes in Congress “to close the Department of Education.”

“If it has worked, and we have proven that this is the best way to do it, then we’ll ask Congress to codify this and make it a permanent move out of the Department of Education into whatever agency that program has gone into,” McMahon told employees.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March, calling for the dismantling of the Education Department. McMahon told lawmakers during her confirmation hearing that the Education Department is set up by Congress, and “it clearly cannot be shut down without it.”

The department, so far this year, has lost about half of its employees through mass layoffs and voluntary separation incentives.

McMahon didn’t mention immediate layoffs or workforce reductions as part of this phase of the reorganization plans, but acknowledged shutdown-era layoffs could return in early 2026.

McMahon said the Education Department has cancelled reduction-in-force notices it sent to about 20% of its remaining workforce during the 43-day government shutdown.

The continuing resolution passed by Congress and signed by Trump put those RIF notices on hold at least through Jan. 30, 2026.

But beyond that point, McMahon acknowledged that RIFs may return.

“Moving forward, that creates unrest. It creates uncertainty for all of you, and I understand that,” she told employees. “I know how difficult it is to make decisions that, from my perspective, are going to affect people’s lives and their livelihood and their teams and what they’re working on. And it is not an easy decision.”

McMahon said a majority of the public didn’t support plans to close the Education Department, when the Trump administration first announced its plans. However, she said the majority of the public does support shifting these programs to other agencies to make them more efficient.

“When the goal will be to have congressional votes to close the Department of Education, we are not closing education. We’re lifting education up, and each of us in this room has a chance to be part of history, and that this is part of our legacy,” she said.

The six interagency agreements will move billions of dollars in grant programs to other agencies. The Labor Department, in particular, will oversee much of the federal funding that will go to K-12 schools, including grants for schools serving low-income communities.

The department says states and schools shouldn’t expect any disruptions to their funding, except that federal funds will now come from the Labor Department.

“The funding will not change. That may flow through a different account or a different building,” McMahon told employees.

The reorganization would move two of the Education Department’s largest programs, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and Office of Postsecondary Education, to the Labor Department.

However, the Education Department will still retain student loan oversight and accreditation of colleges to ensure they are eligible to receive students’ federal financial aid.

Critics of the reorganization say that the agencies taking on Education programs and personnel don’t have expertise in these policy areas, and that the transfer could disrupt some of its essential programs.

“That national mission is weakened when its core functions are scattered across other federal or state agencies that are not equipped or positioned to provide the same support and services as ED staff,” AFGE Local 252 President Rachel Gittleman said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story

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A bipartisan bill that would end the Trump administration’s rollback of collective bargaining rights for most federal employees is guaranteed to get a full House vote, now that a majority of lawmakers support it.

As of Monday, 218 House lawmakers signed onto a discharge petition, forcing the House to vote on the Protect America’s Workforce Act.

The bill, led by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Jared Golden (D-Maine) would restore collective bargaining rights for tens of thousands of federal employees, if approved by Congress.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March that barred unions from bargaining on behalf of federal employees at many agencies, on the grounds that those agencies work primarily in national security. In August, he signed another executive order that expanded the list of agencies barred from negotiations with federal employee unions.

Lawmakers estimate the executive order impacts about 67% of the federal workforce. The Trump administration’s policy has barred unions from representing employees at the departments of Defense, State, Veterans Affairs, Justice and Energy.

A group of six unions led by the American Federation of Government Employees sued the Trump administration over its rollback of collective bargaining rights, arguing that the administration has taken an overly broad view of agencies that work primarily in national security.

A federal judge blocked the administration from enforcing the executive order in April, but an appeals court stayed that decision this summer and allowed agencies to keep canceling collective bargaining agreements that cover broad swaths of the federal workforce. Since the appeals court’s ruling, several agencies have rescinded their collective bargaining rights with unions.

Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Nick Lalota (R-N.Y.) contributed the last two signatures for the discharge petition on Monday. Lawler said in a statement that “restoring collective bargaining rights strengthens our federal workforce and helps deliver more effective, accountable service to the American people.”

“Every American deserves the right to have a voice in the workplace, including those who serve their country every single day. Supporting workers and ensuring good government are not opposing ideas. They go hand in hand,” Lawler said.

Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, applauded Republican lawmakers for supporting the bill, and called on the House to quickly vote on it.

“Collective bargaining gives employees a fundamental voice in making the government work better for the American people, and we thank Congressman Lawler for recognizing that America functions best when labor and management cooperate toward common goals,” Kelley said.

AFGE’s National VA Council recently filed a lawsuit challenging the VA’s selective enforcement of the administration’s executive order. The complaint states that VA Secretary Doug Collins scrapped collective bargaining agreements with unions opposed to the Trump administration’s federal workforce polices, but spared labor contracts for unions that represent VA police, security guards and firefighters.

Meanwhile, another bipartisan group of lawmakers is also leading a bill that would restore collective bargaining rights for VA employees. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) are leading that bill.

The National Treasury Employees Union, as well as the National Weather Service Employees Organization and the Patent Office Professional Association, are also suing the Trump administration over its collective bargaining rollback.  Federal courts in D.C. will hold proceedings in both cases next month.

The post House majority forces vote on bill to restore collective bargaining for most federal employees first appeared on Federal News Network.

Following the longest shutdown in U.S. history, the federal workforce is now trying to get back to at least some sense of normalcy.

While federal employees who have been furloughed for the last 43 days return to work Thursday, the Office of Personnel Management is setting expectations for agencies as they begin to update pay, leave and benefits for those impacted by the lapse in appropriations.

In new guidance, OPM said it is “is committed to ensuring that retroactive pay is provided as soon as possible.” Compensation will be provided for both furloughed and excepted federal employees, as the spending agreement that was enacted Wednesday evening reaffirmed. A 2019 law previously called for retroactive compensation for all federal employees impacted by a shutdown.

A senior Trump administration official said the White House “has urged agencies to get employee paychecks out expeditiously and accurately to not leave anyone waiting longer than necessary.”

But the timing of employees receiving their back pay varies, depending on what payroll provider an agency uses, and the different pay schedules across the federal workforce.

Sending out retroactive payments to employees involves working across agency HR offices, federal payroll providers and shared service centers. Agency HR offices, for instance, have to submit timecards for federal employees, which are then processed by the government’s various payroll providers.

According to the senior administration official, employees from the General Services Administration and OPM will be among the first to receive their retroactive paychecks, with an expected deposit date set for Saturday.

Employees at the departments of Veterans Affairs, Energy, and Health and Human Services, as well as civilian employees from the Defense Department, will receive their deposits shortly after that — this Sunday.

On Monday, affected employees from the departments of Education, State, Interior and Transportation, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Social Security Administration and NASA, are all expected to receive their back pay.

Then on Wednesday, employees from the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Treasury, Labor and Justice, along with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Small Business Administration, are projected to get their paychecks. The timing of the retroactive payments for feds was first reported by Semafor.

The National Finance Center, a payroll provider housed under the Agriculture Department, confirmed that employees at agencies using NFC’s services should expect a payroll deposit by the middle of next week.

“In order to provide backpay for employees as quickly as possible, the National Finance Center will be expediting pay processing for pay period 22 and backpay for pay periods 19 (October 1-4), 20 (October 5-18), and 21 (October 19-November 1),” USDA wrote in an all-staff email Wednesday evening, obtained by Federal News Network.

Federal News Network has reached out to several other federal payroll providers requesting details on the timeline for processing retroactive payments.

The National Treasury Employees Union urged immediate back pay for all federal employees who have been going without compensation for the last six weeks.

“This is an emergency for federal employees across the country, and they should not have to wait another minute longer for the paychecks they lost during the longest government shutdown in history,” NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said. “We call on all federal agencies to process the back pay immediately.”

In its new guidance, OPM also noted that to make payments as quickly as possible, payroll providers may need to “make some adjustments.” That could mean, for instance, that the initial retroactive payments employees receive might not reflect the exact calculations of their pay and leave hours.

“Payroll providers will work with agencies to make any necessary adjustments as soon as practicable,” OPM said.

Who receives back pay, and how much?

Furloughed employees will receive their “standard rate of pay” for the hours they would have worked if the government shutdown hadn’t occurred, OPM said in its guidance Wednesday evening.

But there are some exceptions to that. If a furloughed employee, for example, had been scheduled for overtime hours that would have occurred during the shutdown, OPM said they should be paid their premium rate for those hours.

Additionally, OPM said that allowances, differentials and other types of payments, like administratively uncontrollable overtime pay or law enforcement availability pay, should be paid as if the furloughed employee continued to work.

Although most employees impacted by the shutdown are ensured back pay, there are some smaller exceptions carved out where employees may not receive retroactive pay, OPM added.

If a furloughed employee was in a non-pay status before the shutdown began, for instance, then they are not entitled to receive back pay.

Excepted employees who were considered “absent without leave” (AWOL) — or in other words, took unapproved time off — will also not receive back pay for that time.

Guidance on leave, post-shutdown

Although excepted employees are not required to use paid leave for taking time off during the shutdown — and can instead enter a “furlough” period — there may still have been some instances where excepted employees took leave during the funding lapse, OPM wrote in its guidance.

In those cases, excepted employees who were approved to take paid leave during the shutdown will be charged for the hours from their leave bank, OPM said.

Agencies are also expected to begin adjusting leave accrual for furloughed employees. Now that the shutdown is over, furloughed employees should be placed in a “pay status” for the time they would have otherwise spent working during the funding lapse. That means accrual of annual and sick leave will be retroactively adjusted as if the employees were in a pay status, OPM said.

Excepted employees continued to accrue leave during the shutdown, which should be reflected in their leave banks, OPM said.

What happens to RIFs of federal employees?

On top of reaffirming back pay, the spending bill that was enacted Wednesday evening also rescinds the roughly 4,000 reductions in force that have occurred since Oct. 1. Federal employees will be temporarily protected from additional RIFs, at least until the end of January.

Agencies have five days to inform federal employees who received RIF notices in October that those actions are rescinded.

“Agencies should issue those notices and confirm to OPM the rescissions have been issued,” OPM’s guidance states.

At least 670,000 federal employees have been furloughed, and 730,000 employees have been working without pay during the shutdown. Agencies have been putting plans in the works to return all furloughed federal employees to their duties as of Thursday.

OPM also said agencies “may consider” providing flexibility for employees who might not be able to return to work immediately, such as by approving personal leave or adjusting individual work schedules.

The post Post-shutdown, here’s how soon federal employees can expect back pay first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript:

Eric White: So let’s just get started with the landscape. Eighty-five percent of the programs, like you heard in my introduction there, a good bit of that was in the food aid distribution area. What is the food distribution look like now from an international, governmental effort standpoint?

Vincent Smith: Looking at purely at the United States and what the current administration is doing, the picture looked extremely bleak in April and May of this year and remains an extremely difficult-to-assess situation. The demise of USAID in what we can only describe as a very unfortunate approach to trying to deal with government programs that did not carefully account for the consequences for very important programs that have not only humanitarian aid issues but also national defense concerns was frankly shocking. It’s easy to be very rude about Elon Musk, but when you put someone in charge of trying to deal with government shrinkage, who has no concept of how programs work. No matter how bright and gifted they are, this is what happens. Poor choices are made, thoughtless choices are made. And international aid, both food aid and health aid, have been devastated over the past nine months because of, largely, really poorly considered actions in the first 60 to 80 days of the Trump administration. A major concern for the deliverers of food aid is whether or not the capacity of the in-country places that are needed to deliver aid to where it is needed, say in Ethiopia or Malawi or Mozambique, or you pick your country. It was not clear that those important human-based resources to manage aid in country would remain in place. It appears, at least for now, that some capacity to deliver aid has been sustained within the embassy framework to handle aid that is being delivered.

But as I looked at the data and how much of the fiscal year 2025 budget had been spent by two days before the end of that fiscal year, really, astonishingly little of it had been spent. However, conversations with folks who are aware of whether or not U.S. government agencies, but agencies such as the food program and non-government organizations involved in delivering aid are able to meet commitments that have been made prior to January the 20th of this year, indicate that those commitments are being sustained. An issue is what new commitments have been made in the last nine months. And when we look at information coming out of the Department of State, which is now the organizing department for aid through a new office that has been created, we could only identify two new initiatives that had been announced. One was sending quite a lot of emergency food aid to a wide range of countries, nine or 10 different countries, targeted to helping feed children. And there was another initiative to, but those initiatives involve relatively small amounts of dollars and we saw no evidence of new aid beyond those two programs that were both initiated in August. Now an interesting question is what about fiscal 2026? And of course, nobody has a budget for 2026. But if I read the government accounts correctly, that looks like there’s a substantial amount of unspent money from fiscal 2025 that can be rolled over or could potentially be rolled over into 2026. And again, these conversations I’ve had with people aware of what is going on with the NGOs and the World Food Program in terms of delivering aid indicate that aid is going to continue to be delivered. How much aid is? I have no knowledge of. It is clear that it looks as though the House Appropriations Committee has set aside, wants to set aside.

This is a better way, not has, because nobody has done anything recently, but it has set aside around about $900 million for international emergency food aid. That’s about a billion short of what would have been appropriated in most prior years of the last two decades. But what is not clear is how much will there be available. According to some estimates, about $700 billion is available that has not been spent in this past fiscal year. So if you add the $900 million to the $700 million, that comes out at, even I can do that math, grumpy, though I may be, that’s about $1.6 billion, which is not far off what is normally appropriated. But that’s purely speculative. And if a major problem looking forward over the next three years is that the House Appropriations Committee’s $900 billion becomes the new base for funding in the budget, then that’s a really dramatic cut from the previous four or five years in terms of funding. And carryover funds don’t last forever. They they just don’t.

Eric White: If presidential impoundment is an issue in several areas where the money is allocated by Congress and the executive branch just doesn’t end up spending it. But this program is different. This isn’t some sort of initiative that the Trump campaign necessarily campaigned on was, ‘We’re going to cut food aid.’ I mean, this has bipartisan support across the board, even when you poll Americans. Are inefficiencies playing part of the blame here for why that money is just kind of sitting there still and not really doing anything?

Vincent Smith: Inefficiencies, in a recent article I wrote, I described the system as fractured by the DOGE operations and firing all of the staff without careful assessment of what really are mission-critical operations. I have the sense from the information sets that I’ve been given that the State Department is worried about that the bipartisan criticism is getting both in public and behind closed doors about not running this program effectively, not getting money out the door to places where there are genuine needs. We’re not talking about money that are spent frivolously here. So the real question is, is there an infrastructure? And does the State Department have enough clout within the cabinet to enable these emergency food aid programs to move forward.

Now what is really interesting is that in the last three weeks, we have seen a really important New York Times story by (Nicholas) Kristof talking about the damage that has been done to children and their mothers and so on in Ugandan refugee camps. We’ve seen another article, and I think it was the AP, about Myanmar hunger and devastation. And we’ve had Bill Gates announcing that his foundation experts have estimated that the number of children’s death, the child mortality rate, for the first time in maybe 20 years is going to increase this year. That’s not just because of the United States cutting back, but it’s in part an important part because the United States has cut back on international aid. There are other countries that have also not stepped up to the plate, if you like, this year in the way that perhaps they would have done two or three years ago. So these are really important issues. We’re talking about, in the humanitarian context, children dying, children who would have otherwise been saved.

Eric White: We’re speaking with Vincent Smith. He’s the director of agricultural policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Now you had mentioned that yeah, there were some issues with efficiency in the World Food Programs before all of this took place. And what were some of the areas that actually needed some improvement?

Vincent Smith: Historically, the International Food Aid Program has been hit by inefficiencies in the following sense. There are two groups, the Mercantile Shipping Lobby in particular, who have really pushed Congress to keep in place two mandates. But other countries do not use because they know they are so wasteful in terms of money. And this is not a Trump administration issue per se. It’s a congressional issue that spans back to 1954. The two mandates are to have sourcing of almost all food aid in the United States. And the other mandate is that at least a fairly substantial part of it be carried on U.S. ships. Now the research that we have done, that’s been published in leading economics journals, shows that freight rates charged by those few ships eligible to carry U.S. food aid under this cargo preference, as it’s called mandate, charged between 60 and 100% more for the same journey to get aid where it’s needed than if we had competitive bidding for those shipments. But in addition, many times, the money would be more efficiently used in terms of meeting needs if the agency managing that money were free to source the food from the best location. What do I mean by best location? The locations from which you can get the food at least total cost and get the food to the children and families that need it most efficiently.

Chris Barrett at Cornell and some other researchers have estimated that this U.S. sourcing mandate delays the delivery of food by as much as four or five months to the places it is needed compared to if we did what almost every other aid-giving country does, which is to allow the most efficient, least cost way, most speedy ways of sourcing the food that is needed. That doesn’t mean say you wouldn’t source food in the United States. We have plenty of emergency food aid needs in the Caribbean. All you have to do is think about the Dominican Republic and Haiti in particular. And there are plenty of times when the U.S. is where you want to source the food because it’s the most efficient, quickest place to go. But putting these constraints has been estimated to waste, especially in the last 30 years, as much as 30% of Congress’ authorized funding for the program. Well, that translates into 2 to 4 to even 6 million folks that we’re not helping. Now, why do we care about this? Well, one, if you’re a decent human being, you do care about helping people in need that none of us in the United States really can even conceive of, unless we’re being white slave or something like that. I mean, you just can’t conceive of it. Two dollars a day to live is very difficult, but there’s also a self-interested purpose.

Almost all of military leadership, if you have them, most of them in public, perhaps not right now with the current challenges that any admiral or general or Air Force commander faces under the current secretary of, I think of it as the defense, I’m sorry, food aid and aid in terms of health, ways in which America has created wonderful goodwill in otherwise very difficult countries that face internal conflicts and so on. And so you have the situation where most leaders in the military, in public, under previous administrations and certainly in private now behind closed doors, would say the military implications, the national defense implications are very significant. Food aid reduces the risk of boots on the ground. And that’s been a consistent story, and it’s a real story. So if we’re spending $2 billion a year and generating goodwill throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and across the globe. That’s a big deal in terms of foreign policy and the reduction in the risk of conflict.

Eric White: Going forward in those conversations with the people that are now in charge of this massive undertaking, I characterized them as growing pains in my introduction. Is that what they feel? Do they feel as if things are moving in the right direction and they’re kind of learning on the go? Yeah, it’s not ideal and more needs to be done or is there just going to have to be some political will behind this to actually make this as efficient and as standing as it probably should be if we want to, I guess, what feel good about ourselves?

Vincent Smith: Well, I believe, now, I don’t interview senators and congressmen on a daily basis or very rarely do I have face-to-face interactions with those decision makers and that’s great. If they’re spending time talking to me, they’ve got to find better things to do with their time. But it’s clear that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Many of the members of those committees are deeply concerned about sustaining and, if anything, significantly expanding and when I say significantly expanding, we’re not talking about a measurable share of the federal budget but sustaining and expanding both emergency food aid and emergency health aid because they recognize the contributions that those actions make both in a humanitarian way and given their concerns about foreign policy and national security and foreign relations sustaining that world.

Within those committees, there’s a strong political will to continue, sustain the program, and many of the members over the years have indicated they would like to see it be more efficiently run, that is not having these mandates for sourcing and cargo preference. That’s not true of everybody. The cargo preference lobby claims that it creates hundreds and thousands of jobs in the mercantile sector and loss of that would be damaging. That’s probably not correct. They also claim that it’s helping the U.S. shipping industry. There’s no evidence of that at all. Those claims are really, I think, a front for a few shipping companies. So there lots of interesting twists to this story. This is a case of very small benefits being desperately sought by, particularly, the maritime lobby. But it’s also the case that there are some members of the House Agriculture Committee, in particular, but also the Senate Committee, who think that sourcing for food aid in the United States benefits directly their constituents, wheat farmers in Kansas, for example. But if benefit means raising the price of wheat or corn in Kansas or Iowa, that really is not the case. In 1954, 30% of all U.S. exports were international food aid. That’s 1954. That is 70 years ago.

Today, less than 1% of the U.S. corn crop and the U.S. wheat crop are shipped internationally. And that represents very little in the way of any impact on the price of wheat or the price of corn. Just as an aside, what matters for the price in Iowa or the price of wheat in Kansas is not domestic production and domestic demand, particularly for wheat. It’s certainly not domestic production. These are globally traded commodities. The U.S. right now produces less than 7% of total world wheat production. It’s a small fraction in a large market, changing the availability of the commercial wheat supply from the U.S. to the international market by diverting a very small amount into international food aid has zero effect on the price of wheat at the local country elevator. The same holds true for corn and most other commodities.

The post Cuts to US emergency food aid are straining global relief efforts and reshaping the State Department first appeared on Federal News Network.

According to several reports from Reuters and the Washington Post, Apple has told several U.S. Embassy and State Department officials that their iPhone may have been targeted by an unknown attacker using state-sponsored spyware created by the controversial Israeli company NSO Group – Pegasus Spyware.

At least 11 U.S. Embassy officials stationed in Uganda or dealing with issues about the country have reportedly opted to use iPhones registered to their phone numbers overseas, although the identity of the threat behind the intrusions or the nature of the information requested remains unknown.

The attacks in recent months are the first time sophisticated surveillance software has been used against US government officials.

NSO Group is the creator of Pegasus, military-grade spyware that allows government clients to stealthily loot files and photos, eavesdrop on conversations, and track the whereabouts of their victims.

Pegasus Spyware uses contactless exploits sent through messaging apps to infect iPhones and Android devices without forcing targets to click links or take any other action, but by default, it is banned from accessing US phone numbers.

Responding to reports, NSO Group said it was investigating the case and, if necessary, suing clients for illegal use of its tools, adding that it had suspended “affected accounts” citing “the seriousness of the charges”.

It should be noted that the company has long argued that it sells its products to government law enforcement and intelligence agencies only to help track security threats and control terrorists and criminals. But evidence gathered over the years has highlighted the systematic abuse of this technology to spy on human rights defenders, journalists and politicians in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Morocco, Mexico and other countries.

The NSO Group’s actions have taken their toll on it, putting it on the radar of the US Department of Commerce, which placed the company on an economic lockdown last month, which may have been caused by targeting the aforementioned foreign American diplomats.

In addition, tech giants Apple and Meta have since launched a legal attack on the company for illegally hacking into its users, exploiting previously unknown security holes in iOS and WhatsApp’s continuous message encryption service. Apple also said it has begun sending out threat notifications to alert users it says have been targeted by government-sponsored attackers on Nov.23.

To that end, affected users will be sent email and iMessage notifications to addresses and phone numbers associated with users’ Apple IDs, and a prominent Threat Alert banner will be displayed at the top of the page when affected users subscribe. to their accounts at appleid.apple [.] com.

“Government-funded players like the NSO Group are spending millions of dollars on sophisticated surveillance technologies without effective accountability,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software development. “This has to change.”

The disclosure also coincides with a Wall Street Journal report detailing the US government’s plan to work with more than 100 countries to restrict the export of surveillance software to authoritarian governments that use the technology to suppress human rights. China and Russia should not be involved in the new initiative.

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