More than a dozen federal statistical agencies are falling behind on producing high-quality data sets that impact the U.S. economy and government policy, according to former officials.

An annual report from the American Statistical Association finds widespread staffing and spending cuts across the federal government, along with policy changes under the Trump administration, have led to certain public-facing data sets being delayed, suspended or canceled.

Experts who led the report are also concerned by a decline of public trust in federal government data sets.

Former Chief Statistician of the United States Nancy Potok, a co-author of the report, said in a call on Wednesday that “we saw a severe decline in the agency’s ability to meet their missions,” and that the “status quo was no longer satisfactory.”

“What most people noticed was that many statistical products just disappeared. They either were eliminated, in terms of no data collection taking place, because contracts were cut or funding was cut or people weren’t there, or because of the lack of staff and resources,” Potok said.

The association’s annual report found that most statistical agencies lost 20% to 30% of their staff this year, and the Trump administration is pursuing further workforce cuts at these agencies.

The Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics lost nearly all its employees this year, as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing plans to dismantle the department and reassign its programs to other federal agencies. The statistics office currently has three employees.

President Donald Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics this summer after the agency produced a monthly jobs report that showed hiring had slowed.

The Social Security Administration’s former chief data officer left the agency after filing a whistleblower complaint alleging that the Department of Government Efficiency improperly put the sensitive data of more than 300 million Americans at risk of exposure.

In May, the DOGE posted on X that the Census Bureau conducts more than 100 additional surveys beyond the decennial population count. DOGE wrote that many of those other surveys are “obsolete,” and that the results are “not being used to drive any action.” DOGE said the Census Bureau has terminated five “wasteful surveys.”

“Some of the existing guardrails are really at risk of being pushed and potentially ignored,” Potok said.

The association’s report last year found that federal statistical agencies are having a harder time producing quality data. Part of the problem is that fewer individuals are filling out the surveys that power this data. A national decline in trust in government corresponds with lower response rates for federal statistical surveys.

Potok said the ASA’s report last year found that “status quo is going to deteriorate over time, and something needs to be done.” However, she said those problems have only gotten worse.

“This is an immediate kind of crisis situation that we have found,” Potok said.

Mike Calabria, the current chief statistician of the U.S., said in a keynote address last month that his priorities are strengthening data security at statistical agencies and reversing a “long-term decline in response rates” for statistical surveys.

“People are going to be more reluctant to respond if they don’t believe that their data is going to be secure and protected,” Calabria said on Nov. 6 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I’m a very big privacy advocate, and I want to make sure that whatever we do collect does not get hacked or breached, or that people feel confident that the data they give the government is not going to be shared in ways that they haven’t consented to.”

A  senior administration official told Federal News Network that the report’s findings amount to “typical swamp lobbying.”

Potok said the Trump administration has taken some steps to support statistical agencies, “but it was far outweighed by the things that happened that weakened them.”

The administration, she added, has exempted the Census Bureau from a governmentwide hiring freeze that ran through Oct. 15. Now that the freeze is over, agencies have been instructed to only hire one new federal employee for every four that leave.

Connie Citro, former director of the Committee on National Statistics of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, said that these agencies produce “bedrock statistics that the financial world, and in general, the world looks to,” and that budgets are not keeping up with demand for data, which has only accelerated with the rise in artificial intelligence tools.

“These weakened resources weaken the ability for agencies to modernize mentor staff, engage with data users and communicate with stakeholders, and all this is essential to set priorities for innovation and move forward,” Citro said.

Since fiscal 2009, eight of the 13 statistical agencies have lost at least 16% of purchasing power, but have been expected to produce more data.

“While there are strong supporters of federal statistics in Congress, we do not have any vocal champions on the Appropriations Committee,” Steve Pierson, ASA’s director of science policy, said on the call.

The report finds the administration has left key leadership unfilled and pursued “disruptive agency relocations” and eliminated statistical products without input from Congress or the public.

“These losses have affected agency work and undermined innovation, modernization, and communication with data users, leaving agencies struggling to meet expanding demands for data that are more granular, timely, and responsive to policymakers’ needs,” the report states.

The report also cites declining public trust in the data these agencies produce. The percentage of U.S. adults who trust federal statistics fell from 57% in June, to 52% in September, according to the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

The percentage of people agreeing or strongly agreeing that they can trust federal statistical agencies to keep information about them confidential declined by six percentage points, from 31% to 25%.

Last month, a federal judge blocked the IRS from sharing data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. There are several other pending federal lawsuits challenging similar data-sharing agreements with ICE.

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The IRS is setting new limits on telework for employees who are facing a variety of temporary hardships.

The agency said in an internal memo Monday that hardship-based requests for full-time telework that employees submitted, but were still awaiting approval, will be “closed,” effective immediately.

The memo, obtained by Federal News Network, cites the Trump administration’s return-to-office mandate for federal employees as the reason for the policy change.

“As a result of return to office, the current hardship program process and approvals will be adjusted to ensure compliance,” the memo states.

According to the memo, IRS employees are generally limited to five days of telework per calendar year.

Employees can still submit hardship-based telework requests, but approvals must come from the agency’s leadership or its human capital office, which is inundated with paperwork from employees retiring under the deferred resignation program.

The IRS lost more than a quarter of its employees this year through voluntary separation incentives.

Several IRS employees told Federal News Network that the IRS in the past has granted hardship-based telework to accommodate a range of emergencies, including employees facing domestic violence or employees who are immunocompromised following organ transplants.

It’s not clear how long employees will wait for hardship approvals under this policy change. Federal News Network has reached out to the IRS and the Treasury Department for comment.

The memo states that requests for short-term telework arrangements lasting fewer than 90 days will still be reviewed and considered on a case-by-case basis.

Short-term telework arrangements for less than 30 days must get approval from the agency’s human capital office. Hardship requests for more than 30 days of telework will require approval from the agency’s chief operating officer.

The new IRS policy comes as other agencies are setting restrictions on telework as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities.

The Department of Health and Human Services rolled out a new reasonable accommodation policy last week that required all telework, remote work, or reassignment requests to be reviewed and approved by an assistant secretary or a higher-level official — a decision that is likely to slow the approval process.

Meanwhile, IRS employees have been under scrutiny from an agency watchdog to ensure they are complying with the Trump administration’s return-to-office mandate.

Federal News Network reported in August that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration conducted an audit, at the request of the Treasury Department, to see if IRS employees were reporting to the office as often as they claimed.

The Trump administration, more broadly, has required agencies to collect data, including badge swipes into office buildings, to determine if federal employees are following the return-to-office mandate.

According to the National Treasury Employees Union’s 2022 national agreement with the IRS, when an employee is experiencing a temporary hardship, the agency “will make every reasonable effort to approve a temporary telework location,” including moving the employee to another office location.

Under this labor agreement, the IRS can approve a permanent hardship in cases where an employee or an immediate family member faces a “significant hardship” that threatens their life or livelihood. Examples include seeking specialized care for serious medical conditions that affect major life functions, a spouse faced with relocation or the loss of their job, or employees facing domestic violence or other similar “threats to life or limb.”

Temporary hardship requests are granted on a broader basis than permanent hardship requests. NTEU and the IRS included temporary hardship requests in their labor contract, based on discussions around medical issues impacting an employee’s immediate family members.

The 2022 agreement states the IRS may approve a temporary hardship for up to a year, depending on the circumstances of the hardship and “subject to staffing and workload needs.” Management can further extend a temporary hardship for a maximum of one more year.

IRS denials of hardship requests are supposed to be resolved through the union’s grievance procedure. The IRS, however, no longer recognizes NTEU, given the Trump administration’s rollback of collective bargaining rights across the federal workforce.

NTEU is leading a lawsuit challenging those executive orders targeting federal employee unions. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear oral arguments in the case next Monday.

The IRS memo states that the agency will still grant requests for “situational” telework for “unforeseen, non-recurring emergencies.”

Those include an employee dealing with an illness or medical appointment that would normally require sick leave, an employee needing to stay home to meet with a service provider for urgent home repairs, or a school or caregiving facility closure with less than 24 hours’ notice.

The memo states that IRS managers can provide up to 90 days of telework as an interim accommodation for employees waiting for the agency to process their request for reasonable accommodation.

Federal agencies are required under the Rehabilitation Act to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified employees with disabilities, as long as that accommodation does not result in an “undue hardship” for agencies.

“Treasury recognizes the role that limited telework can play to support achieving the mission and employees’ work-life balance,” the IRS memo states.

However, Tax Notes reported last week that the IRS faces a growing backlog of more than 8,000 reasonable accommodation requests.

The post IRS closes out ‘hardship’ requests for telework, citing return-to-office mandate first appeared on Federal News Network.

A top human resources official at the State Department, who played a major role in the agency’s widespread reduction in force this summer, is moving on to a new role within the agency.

Lew Olowski, the chief human capital officer for the Bureau of Personnel and Training, is stepping down from that role to become the senior bureau official for the Office of Foreign Missions, two sources familiar with the decision told Federal News Network. The State Department declined to comment.

In this role, Olowski oversaw layoffs of nearly 1,350 State Department employees in July. The department sent reduction-in-force 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.

Politico first reported on Olowski’s new role within the State Department.

Most of the employees who received RIF notices this summer officially separated from the agency in September.

The State Department sought to finalize layoffs for nearly 250 Foreign Service officers and several civil service employees last week. But a federal judge in San Francisco temporarily blocked the department from officially separating those employees.

The temporary restraining order signed last Thursday is part of an ongoing lawsuit 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 stopgap funding 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.

A recent survey led by the American Foreign Service Association found the State Department’s diplomatic workforce, given sweeping changes happening under the Trump administration, felt overburdened, under-resourced and more likely to leave in the next few years.

In a survey of more than 2,100 active-duty Foreign Service employees, AFSA 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.

AFSA said in April that it was “deeply concerned” by Olowski’s appointment to the department’s top HR role, which is typically held by career members of the Foreign Service with decades of relevant experience.

“The Foreign Service is a competitive, merit-based institution, built on a foundation of expertise, service, and nonpartisanship. Placing an untenured, entry-level officer who has only served one complete overseas tour into this critical role, even in an acting capacity, not only disregards that tradition but also sends a clear message about the value this administration places on experience and professional progression,” AFSA wrote.

The post State Department HR chief moving on to new role after carrying out layoffs this summer first appeared on Federal News Network.

Mahri Stainnak got the call the day after President Donald Trump took office: the Office of Personnel Management’s human resources office was putting them on administrative leave “effective immediately,” while the agency “investigates your radical and wasteful DEI activity.”

Stainnak was surprised by the news. Before the Trump administration, they served as OPM’s deputy director of the governmentwide Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility. But now they worked as the director of OPM’s talent innovation group, a human resources job focused on recruiting and retaining talent across the federal government.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute, I’m not in diversity, equity and inclusion.’ I started a new role in a job that has nothing to do with diversity, equity and inclusion.’ So I felt incredibly shocked and confused,” Stainnak said.

The second call came 48 hours later: Stainnak, a nonbinary person who had worked in the federal government for more than 16 years, received a reduction in force notice, as part of the Trump administration’s plan to root out DEI programs across the federal government.

Stainnak is now part of a class-action lawsuit filed this week in the D.C. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The lawsuit, led by the American Civil Liberties Union of D.C., claims the Trump administration unlawfully targeted and fired federal employees perceived to be associated with DEI work — even if their current jobs had nothing to do with it.

Mary Kuntz, an attorney at the law firm Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch, P.C. who is representing the former employees, said the administration’s actions “clearly” violate the Civil Service Reform Act, because employees like Stainnak were fired for previous work in DEI positions.

“You can’t RIF somebody from a position they’re not in,” Kuntz said. “They sought to punish Mahri [Stainnak] for previous DEI work. That’s a violation of the First Amendment.”

Kuntz said the lawsuit claims that the administration’s push to “eviscerate” DEI programs also had a disproportionate impact on people of color, women, non-binary individuals, and violates Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

“The DEI folks were working on behalf of people with disabilities, people who are non-native speakers of English. They were advocating for protected groups,” she said.

On the campaign trail last year, President Donald Trump pledged to “eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the entire federal government,” and characterized these programs as promoting “un-American” ideology.

On his first days in office, Trump signed executive orders that directed agencies to create lists of employees associated with DEI going back to Nov. 5, 2024 — the date of the presidential election.  The complaint says agencies were directed to remove those employees, “regardless of their current roles or duties.”

“President Trump’s directives did not merely represent a change in presidential priorities — a normal occurrence when presidential administrations change. Rather, they were targeted actions intended to punish perceived political enemies, as well as to eliminate from the federal workforce women, people of color, and those, like plaintiffs, who advocated for or were perceived as advocating for protected racial or gender groups,” the complaint states.

The complaint says agencies set competitive levels for the RIFs so narrowly that federal employees were unable to compete for retention, and that those impacted by RIFs were not considered for reassignment to other jobs.

“I absolutely feel targeted on the basis of what the Trump administration believes my beliefs are, because I was not working in a diversity, equity and inclusion role in any way at the time when the new administration came in, or at the time I was placed on administrative leave,” Stainnak said.

For all the Trump administration’s actions to strip DEI out of the federal workforce, Kuntz said the president’s executive orders don’t go into any detail to define DEI.

“He characterizes them as illegal and discriminatory and various other things … but doesn’t define them,” Kuntz said. “You can’t decide that somebody is a different party than the party in the White House and decide to fire them on that basis.”

The lawsuit states that the total number of federal employees impacted by the DEI rollback fis unknown, but says news reports suggest it could be “potentially in the thousands.”

The complaint states that at least 40 women or non-binary individuals, and more than 40 people of color received layoffs in connection with the Trump administration’s directives.

Stainnak and their colleagues filed an appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board in March, but Kuntz said that appeal and similar cases brought before the Office of Special Counsel and agencies’ Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) offices, have stalled.

In their last role, Stainnak helped agencies recruit top talent into the federal workforce. But they said the Trump administration’s purge of DEI workers has pushed out individuals who worked on bipartisan projects.

Former federal employees leading the lawsuit include a former operations manager at the Department of Veterans Affairs who “helped ensure that veterans were not inhibited from accessing earned benefits due to cultural or socioeconomic barriers,” a Department of Homeland Security Employee who led language competency efforts at the border to advance intelligence gathering and the safety of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

“By illegally targeting people based on the Trump administration’s assumptions about our political beliefs, or by targeting us based on who we are, this administration actually is hurting the people who work and live in this country, because now these dedicated, hardworking federal servants are not in their jobs providing the critical services that they do, whether it’s responding to emergencies like hurricanes and making sure folks have drinking water and shelter, or making sure our transportation systems are safe and timely. This action is really hurting the people who live in this country,” Stainnak said.

The post Federal employees who left ‘DEI’ roles still fired under Trump administration purge, lawsuit claims first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Department of Health and Human Services is setting new restrictions on telework as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities.

A new, departmentwide reasonable accommodation policy shared with employees this week states that all requests for telework, remote work, or reassignment must be reviewed and approved by an assistant secretary or a higher-level official — a decision that is likely to slow the approval process.

The new policy, as Federal News Network reported on Monday, generally restricts employees from using telework as an “interim accommodation,” while the agency processes their reasonable accommodation request.

“Telework is not appropriate for an interim accommodation, unless approved at the assistant secretary level or above,” the new policy states.

The updated reasonable accommodation policy, signed on Sept. 15 by HHS Chief Human Capital Officer and Deputy Assistant Secretary Thomas Nagy, Jr., replaces a more than decade-old policy, and applies to all HHS component agencies.

“This policy is effective immediately and must be followed by HHS component in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and departmental policy,” the policy states.

It’s not clear how long it will take HHS to review each individual reasonable accommodation request. But HHS, which now handles all reasonable accommodation requests from its component agencies, faces a backlog of more than 3,000 cases — which it expects will take six to eight months to complete.

The new policy allows frontline supervisors to grant “simple, obvious requests” without consulting with an HHS reasonable accommodation coordinator, but prohibits them from granting telework or remote work.

“Telework and reassignment are not simple, obvious requests,” the policy states.

The policy also directs HHS to collect data on the “number of requests that involve telework or remote work, in whole or in part.”

A memo from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that “all telework related to RAs will be repealed,” and that CDC leadership will no longer be allowed to approve telework as an interim accommodation.

“Staff currently on an agreement will need to report back to the worksite,” the memo states.

The CDC memo states employees can still request telework as a reasonable accommodation, but “until they are reviewed and approved by HHS they must report to the worksite.”

It also states that employees can request what was previously known as “medical telework,” which can be approved by the CDC chief operating officer for around six months in length.

According to the memo, CDC can temporarily grant medical telework to employees who are dealing with recovering from chemotherapy, hip replacement surgery or pregnancy complications.

If HHS rejects a reasonable accommodation, the CDC memo states an employee can challenge the decision before an appeal board. The CDC, however, expects that appeal will “also take months to process,” and that employees must continue to work from the office while the appeal is pending.

“We know this is going to be tough, especially on front-line supervisors,” the CDC memo states.

HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard said in a statement that the new reasonable accommodation policy “establishes department-wide procedures to ensure consistency with federal law.”

“Interim accommodations may be provided while cases move through the reasonable-accommodation process toward a final determination. The department remains committed to processing these requests as quickly as possible,” Hilliard said.

Jodi Hershey, a former FEMA reasonable accommodation specialist and the founder of EASE, LLC, a firm that helps employers and employees navigate workplace accessibility issues, said the new policy suggests HHS is “playing fast and loose with the Rehabilitation Act, and what’s required of them” under the legislation.

“This is the most inefficient way to handle reasonable accommodations possible. By centralizing reasonable accommodation-deciding officials, you’re removing the decision from the person who knows the most about the job. The immediate supervisor or manager knows what the job is, how the job is normally performed. They know the employee. When you remove that level of familiarity from the process, and you move it up the chain … that person has no idea what the job even is. They don’t know the person that they’re dealing with. They don’t know the office. They don’t know the particulars at all,” Hershey said.

In a message obtained by Federal News Network, Cheryl Prigodich, principal deputy director for the CDC’s Office of Safety, Security and Asset Management, told an HHS employee that because their one-year reasonable accommodation had expired, they needed to submit a new request for approval.

“The timeframe for approval on your request is not known at this time. In the interim, however, we are not allowed to approve telework as an interim accommodation for a reasonable accommodation,” Prigodich said.

Prigodich told the employee that, according to HHS, employees must either use annual leave, 80 hours of annual ad hoc telework available to each HHS employee, take leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act or report to the workplace “with the possibility of another acceptable accommodation (work tour, physical modifications to the workplace, etc).”

Prigodich directed the employee to submit their request to renew their reasonable accommodation request to the HHS assistant secretary for administration, but recommended that they “efficiently summarize your concern and request (with appropriate documentation) into no greater than a single-page memo.”

“The ASA will not want to comb through previous emails or too many attachments,” Prigodich said.

The one-page request, she added, should include “why no other alternative accommodation will work,” documentation of the disability, and records showing the previously approved reasonable accommodation.

“I know this is frustrating. We are certainly frustrated too — and this represents a significant policy change for a great number of people who rely on this type of accommodation for their personal health and needs,” Prigodich said.

The post CDC tells staff telework reasonable accommodations ‘will be repealed,’ as HHS sets stricter rules first appeared on Federal News Network.

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.

The Department of Health and Human Services faces a months-long backlog of reasonable accommodation requests from its employees, as the department embarks on major changes to how it handles these requests.

HHS is preparing to roll out a new reasonable accommodation policy later this week. Several HHS components, however, recently set their own new policies, which more broadly cover telework and how often employees may work from home.

The new policy comes at a time when the Trump administration has called on the federal workforce to show up to the office full-time, and has rolled back options for some employees to work from home full-time or occasionally each two-week pay period.

Federal agencies are required under the Rehabilitation Act to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified employees with disabilities, as long as that accommodation does not result in an “undue hardship” for agencies.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told employees in a memo last week that its Accommodation Tracking System (ATS) was shutting down, and that, effective immediately, reasonable accommodations will be “centralized at the HHS level.”

According to the memo obtained by Federal News Network, HHS will need to work through a backlog of about 3,330 of CDC’s pending reasonable accommodation requests.

It’s not clear how long it will take HHS to review each individual reasonable accommodation request, but according to the CDC memo, HHS expects it will take six to eight months to get through the backlog.

It’s not clear if other HHS components are also facing a backlog of reasonable accommodation requests.

The CDC memo states that its Office of Human Resources announced telework “should not be given as an interim accommodation,” while a reasonable accommodation request is under review.

“If the employee requests telework, the employee must still report into the office until a decision is made (or use leave),” the CDC memo states.

HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard told Federal News Network in a statement Monday that “HHS is centralizing reasonable accommodation requests in alignment with President Trump’s executive order on return to work.”

“The department remains committed to processing these requests as quickly as possible,” Hilliard said.

The CDC memo also states HHS is expected to release an updated reasonable accommodation policy later this week.

Several CDC employees told Federal News Network that the agency has recently unveiled a new telework policy, in which employees are limited to 80 hours of telework per year, and that reasonable accommodations cannot include regular/scheduled or full-time telework.

A CDC spokesperson said in a statement that “this shift aligns with President Trump’s executive order on returning federal employees to in-person work, ensuring the government is best positioned to deliver results for the American people.

In September, the CDC said it would stop approving telework requests for employees with reasonable accommodations, but temporarily reversed course on that decision, according to internal agency emails obtained by Federal News Network.

A separate email obtained by Federal News Network told HHS employees with pending reasonable accommodations that “all existing reasonable accommodation programs have been consolidated to form the HHS Reasonable Accommodation (RA) Taskforce, servicing the entire HHS workforce.”

The email, sent by an HHS reasonable accommodations coordinator, instructs employees with pending reasonable accommodation requests to complete a questionnaire within seven calendar days, and to submit medical documentation within 20 calendar days.

The email states that failure to submit the required medical documentation by this deadline will result in a “closure of your request.”

The American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, which represents CDC headquarters employees in Atlanta, told members in an email on Nov. 26 that the agency is once again taking steps to end full-time telework for employees with reasonable accommodations.

AFGE Local 2883 wrote that on the first day back to work after the 43-day government shutdown ended, CDC employees were told that supervisors no longer have authority to approve temporary 90-day agreements for full-time telework, and that their temporary accommodations that expired over the shutdown could not be renewed.

“Some were told their current, non-expired RAs were cancelled outright. Still others were told telework is no longer a reasonable accommodation available to CDC staff. Scores of employees with disabilities were instructed to return to the office or take leave,” the union wrote.

AFGE Local 2883 told members that CDC’s actions stand in “direct defiance” of the return-to-office mandate that President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office, as well as follow-up guidance from the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management.

“This harmful policy change keeps us from doing our jobs for the American people in the best way possible. It works against the safety and well-being of all of our colleagues, including many of whom were forced to return to a campus still marred by unrepaired bullet holes from the August shooting. And it violates our rights as federal workers. It’s against the law to mass-deny any type of reasonable accommodation for everyone in the agency,” the union wrote.

In August, a gunman fired more than 180 shots into the CDC’s headquarters, killing a police officer who responded to the scene.

According to the union, however, HHS reasonable accommodation coordinators have said “telework is still a reasonable accommodation at CDC,” and that existing temporary reasonable accommodations granted on or before Sept. 15 will continue and can be extended or modified as appropriate.

“CDC’s misrepresentation of HHS’s policy on reasonable accommodations terrorized both the supervisors who implemented it and the employees who suffered as a result,” the union wrote. “This is a confusing and stressful time for many of us, especially as there has been no clear guidance across offices for what comes next. We cannot let this chaos and uncertainty stand, and we will demand clear leadership and full transparency.”

Despite these restrictions on telework as reasonable accommodations, some parts of HHS are, more broadly, easing up on work-from-home restrictions.

At the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Administrator Mehmet Oz told staff in a Nov. 14 email that CMS employees will be able to take up to four telework days per month, “in recognition of the hard work that you all have put in this year.”

According to the email, employees who scored a 4.5 or higher on their most recent performance rating will be eligible to take two days of telework per two-week pay period. Employees who scored between 4.49 and 3.0 will be eligible to day a single telework day per pay period.

The new policy went into effect on Nov. 17. Oz told employees that these telework days would not count against the 80 hours of telework that all HHS employees can take each year. CMS did not respond to a request for comment.

Oz told CMS staff that any telework in excess of that 80-hour limit would require an office-level or center-level signoff, including by the political leadership for that component.

“Those requests must include a detailed writeup justifying the exception and need to then be sent forward to be approved by the COO for CMS,” Oz wrote. “All requests beyond the 80 hours will be sent to HHS for tracking and awareness.”

According to the email, new employees won’t be eligible for telework until they are at least six months into the job.

“Once they have completed their probationary period and received their first-year performance review then their telework status can reflect that performance rating,” Oz wrote.

The post HHS faces months-long backlog of reasonable accommodation requests from employees first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Trump administration’s plans to shutter four small agencies are indefinitely on hold, following a court’s recent ruling.

A federal judge in Rhode Island issued a permanent injunction on Nov. 21, blocking the administration from taking any further action to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Minority Business and Development Agency, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and the Interagency Council on Homelessness.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March, eliminating these agencies — and three others — “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” But attorneys general in 21 states sued the administration, arguing that these agency closures would have downstream effects on state-level operations.

The permanent injunction ordered by U.S. District Court Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. prevents the four agencies from “taking any future action to implement, give effect to, comply with, or carry out the directives contained in the Reduction EO.”

McConnell determined that the Trump administration’s decision to conduct widespread layoffs, terminate grants and eliminate programs at these agencies “undermined their ability to perform functions mandated by statute.”

“By now, the question presented in this case is a familiar one: may the executive branch undertake such actions in circumvention of the will of the legislative branch? In recent months, this court — along with other courts across the country — has concluded that it may not. That answer remains the same here,” he wrote.

The agencies targeted for elimination are responsible for funding museums and libraries, mediating labor disputes, supporting minority-owned businesses, and preventing and ending homelessness.

Over the course of several months, the Trump administration fired, placed on administrative leave, or reassigned nearly all employees in these four agencies. The administration cancelled a wide range of grants to the agencies, and cancelled public programs and services that the agencies provided.

McConnell said these decisions left the agencies unable to carry out their statutorily mandated functions, and unable to spend their congressionally appropriated funds.

The court issued a preliminary injunction in May. The Trump administration appealed the district court’s preliminary injunction, but dropped its appeal on Nov. 21, following the judge’s permanent injunction. Federal News Network has reached out to the White House and the Justice Department for comment.

The Supreme Court and federal appeals courts have mostly allowed the Trump administration to proceed with plans to shutter agencies and conduct mass layoffs across the federal workforce.

The Trump administration argued that a preliminary injunction in this case prevented agencies from implementing the president’s priorities.  McConnell, however, said he ruled in favor of the states, given a “plethora of injuries” that would arise, if the court did not intervene.

States told the court that closing IMLS would force the closure of public libraries, force them to implement hiring freezes and stop providing services that support literacy and learning. State universities said they would be forced to lay off employees, eliminate student programming and default on contracts without continued funding for MBDA.

In other cases, states said some of their agencies and programs are at risk of work stoppages and negotiation impasses, without FMCS around to resolve labor disputes. States also told the court they would lose expert assistance on how to reduce homelessness without the Interagency Council on Homelessness.

“All this to say: the injuries alleged are to the States themselves and are far more than merely economic or speculative,” McConnell wrote.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James called the ruling a “major victory in our ongoing work to defend important services.”

“The federal government’s illegal attack on these agencies threatened vital resources for workers, small businesses, and the most vulnerable in our communities,” James said.

The American Library Association said the court’s decision “restores everything that the executive order tried to take away.”

“Convincing a federal judge that shuttering a supposedly obscure agency would have an immediate and devastating impact on millions of Americans is no small feat,” ALA President Sam Helmick said. “Libraries also strengthen local economies by supporting jobseekers, small businesses and community learning. Protecting these resources matters.”

The post Federal court blocks Trump administration’s plan to scrap 4 small agencies first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Department of Government Efficiency, the driving force behind the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce and executive branch spending, isn’t wrapping up operations sooner than expected, according to several administration officials.

Reuters published a story on Sunday claiming that DOGE no longer exists, about eight months ahead of the deadline set by President Donald Trump. The story drew strong reactions from Trump administration officials, who rejected claims that DOGE is ending before its final day on July 4, 2026.

A DOGE spokesperson told Federal News Network on Tuesday that DOGE and its longer-term, tech-aligned counterpart, the U.S. DOGE Service, both remain — and that the latter organization is moving forward with a full slate of modernization projects.

The spokesperson, in response to written questions, confirmed DOGE still exists as a temporary organization within the U.S. DOGE Service, and that Amy Gleason remains the acting administrator of USDS.

In addition, the spokesperson said the U.S. DOGE Service — a Trump-era rebranding of the U.S. Digital Service — is working on several cross-agency projects. The spokesperson said USDS is actively involved in these projects, but the agencies in charge of these projects oversee staffing and hiring. The list of projects shared with Federal News Network closely resembles the type of work that USDS was involved in before the Trump administration.

“The U.S. DOGE Service remains deeply engaged across government-modernizing critical systems, improving public services, and delivering fast, practical solutions where the country needs them most,” the spokesperson said.

Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor wrote on X that “DOGE may not have centralized leadership under USDS,” but the “principles of DOGE remain alive and well.”

Those principles, he added, include deregulation; eliminating fraud, waste and abuse; and reshaping the federal workforce.

Kupor wrote that DOGE “catalyzed these changes,” and that OPM and the Office of Management and Budget “will institutionalize them.”

It’s not clear that DOGE leadership ever set exact demands for its representatives scattered across multiple federal agencies. Current and former DOGE representatives publicly stated that DOGE leadership played a hands-off role in their day-to-day work, and that they identified primarily as employees of their agencies. Former DOGE employees said they rarely heard from Elon Musk, DOGE’s former de facto leader, once they completed their onboarding to join the Trump administration.

DOGE wrote on X that “President Trump was given a mandate by the American people to modernize the federal government and reduce waste, fraud and abuse,” and that it terminated 78 contracts worth $335 million last week.

The DOGE spokesperson said the U.S. DOGE Service is working on a project to use AI to process over 600,000 pieces of federal correspondence each month, and is working with the General Services Administration to advance “responsible AI governmentwide.”

Current U.S. DOGE Service projects include:

• Supporting 18 million students by modernizing the FAFSA system and implementing major student loan and Pell Grant changes.
• Improving access to benefits with a streamlined, public-option verification tool that helps states accelerate community engagement requirements for Medicaid and SNAP approvals.
• Transforming the non-immigrant visa process to support Olympic and World Cup travel with a more reliable, adaptable digital platform.
• Reducing delays for over 600,000 veterans each month through a modernized VA disability compensation application.
• Building a modern National Provider Directory to speed Medicare provider enrollment and enable nationwide interoperability.
• Launching new patient-facing apps and data access tools, first announced at the White House and rolling out beginning January 2026.
• Digitizing the National Firearms Act process, replacing outdated paper systems.
• Using AI responsibly to process over 600,000 pieces of federal correspondence monthly.
• Strengthening Medicare’s digital experience with better security, fraud reporting, caregiver access and reduced paper burden.
•  Improving VA appointment management with integrated scheduling, check-ins, notifications and after-visit support.
• Advancing responsible AI government-wide through partnership with GSA.
• Rapid-response deployments for Customs and Border Protection, FEMA, Medicare claims modernization, FDA data consolidation.

Gleason said in September that agencies don’t have enough tech talent to deliver on the administration’s policy goals, and they would need to boost hiring

“We need to hire and empower great talent in government,” Gleason said on Sept. 4. “There’s not enough tech talent here. We need more of it.”

Under the Trump administration, federal employees have faced mass layoffs and incentives to leave government service. The Partnership for Public Service estimates that, as of October, more than 211,000 employees left the federal workforce this year — either voluntarily or involuntarily.

Gleason, who also serves as a strategic advisor for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said tech hiring is essential to help CMS “build modern services for the American people.” She said the agency, at the beginning of this year, had about 13 engineers managing thousands of contractors.

“If we could hire great talent for tech in the government, I think in five years, we can really transform a lot of these systems to be much more modern and user-friendly, and easy for citizens to engage with what they need,” Gleason said. “But we have to take advantage of hiring.”

The post DOGE and its long-term counterpart remain, with a full slate of modernization projects underway first appeared on Federal News Network.

Democratic lawmakers say agencies aren’t reinstating as many federal employees as they should be, as part of a recent spending deal that ended the longest government shutdown.

Employees who received reduction in force (RIF) notices before the government shutdown, but were on track to be officially separated from their agencies during the shutdown, say layoff protections included in the Nov. 12 continuing resolution mean they should get their jobs back.

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 last week that they rescinded shutdown-era RIF notices for more than 3,600 employees.

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.”

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.), told Small Business Agency 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.”

Federal News Network first reported last week that SBA 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 senators 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.”

“Consequently, SBA is without authority to maintain any RIFs that occurred during the lapse in appropriations or to initiate or otherwise carry out any new or previously noticed RIFs,” the senators wrote in a Nov. 20 letter.

The senators are directing SBA to reinstate the SBA employees and “return them to working status with full back pay.” The letter gives SBA until this Friday to comply with their request and provide an update to their offices.

House Small Business Committee Ranking Member Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) also sent a letter to SBA, expressing “serious concern” over the agency’s back-and-forth announcements about RIF rescissions.

Velázquez told Loeffler that “there was no justification for the change,” and that “you have deliberately sought to harm federal employees, who have dedicated their careers to helping entrepreneurs launch and grow their small businesses.”

“The erratic, cruel, and callous manner in which you handled this matter is unacceptable,” she wrote. “The law is clear, and SBA must restore these employees to their positions with back pay, effective immediately.”

Recently laid-off employees at the General Services Administration are calling on the agency to rescind their RIF notices, citing language in the recently passed continuing resolution. The American Foreign Service Association is urging the State Department to reverse RIF notices that went out this summer and took effect during the shutdown.

Recently RIF-ed Justice Department employees are also seeking reinstatement.

A former DOJ employee said about 30 recently laid-off staff from the agency’s Community Relations Service, Office for Access to Justice and the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces are also seeking reinstatement. These are all offices DOJ is seeking to eliminate or consolidate, as part of its agency reorganization plans.

The recently separated employee, who worked for the Community Relations Service, said it’s clear lawmakers meant to cover as many federal employees as possible in the layoff protections.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

The former DOJ employee said several individuals seeking reinstatement have appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board. The former employee, however, said some have not pursued an MSPB appeal because of the cost and the long wait to receive a ruling from the board.

Others are hopeful that a federal lawsuit in Boston challenging the DOJ’s reorganization plans could eventually lead to reinstatement. The lawsuit is challenging the department’s plans to eliminate the Community Relations Service.

On Monday, members of the Congressional Equality Caucus wrote that, without CRS, DOJ would be too understaffed to handle a rise in reported hate crimes in the U.S.

“With these changes, CRS would be unable to perform its statutorily required functions with just one staff member. The dismantling of CRS is not only unlawful, it is also particularly concerning given the rise in community unrest, where CRS’s peacebuilding and mediation services would play a vital role.”

The post Lawmakers say agencies aren’t reinstating enough laid-off employees under shutdown-ending deal first appeared on Federal News Network.

The IRS, ahead of an upcoming reorganization of its tech office, is putting its IT staff to the test.

The agency, in an email sent Monday, directed its IT workforce to complete a “technical skills assessment.”

IRS Chief Information Officer Kaschit Pandya told employees that the assessment is part of a broader effort to gauge the team’s technical proficiency, ahead of an “IRS IT organizational realignment.”

“Over time, hiring practices and role assignments have evolved, and we want to ensure our technical workforce is accurately aligned with the work ahead. The assessment will help establish a baseline understanding of our collective strengths and areas for development,” Pandya told staff in an email sent Monday.

Pandya’s office is leading the technical skills assessment, in coordination with the Treasury Department, the IRS human capital office and the Office of Personnel Management.

“I want to emphasize that this is a baseline assessment, not a performance rating. Your individual-level results will not affect your pay or grade,” he told staff. “I know this comes during a very busy and uncertain time, and I deeply appreciate your partnership.”

Pandya told staff that a “limited group” of IRS IT employees in technical roles — including developers, testers and artificial intelligence/machine learning engineers have been invited to complete the test. He told staff that, as of Monday, about 100 employees were directed to complete the assessment.

On Friday, an IRS IT employee told Federal News Network that several hundred employees have now completed the assessment, and that it took employees about 90 minutes to complete it.

According to the employee, Pandya told staff in an all-hands meeting on Friday that one of the agency’s goals is to rely more on full-time IT employees, and less on outside contractors. He said during that meeting that IRS IT currently has about 6,000 IT employees and about 4,500 contractors.

“It doesn’t make sense, considering all the RIFs, firings and decisions that ignored expertise,” the IRS IT employee said.

The IRS has lost more than 25% of its workforce so far this year, largely through voluntary separation incentives. Pandya told staff in an email this summer that the agency needs to “reset and reassess,” in part because more than 2,000 IT employees have separated from the IRS since January. The IRS had about 8,500 IT employees at the start of fiscal 2025.

The agency also sent mass layoff notices to its employees during the government shutdown, but has rescinded those notices as required by Congress in its spending deal that ended the shutdown.

The Treasury Department sent reduction-in-force notices to 1,377 employees during the recent government shutdown — as part of a broader RIF that targeted about 4,000 federal workers. Court documents show the IRS employees received the vast majority of those RIF notices, and that they disproportionately impacted human resources and IT personnel at the IRS.

The technical assessment is also in line with goals set by Treasury CIO and Department of Government Efficiency representative Sam Corcos, who recently said IRS IT layoffs were “painful,” but necessary for the agency’s upcoming tech reorganization.

In a recent podcast interview, Corcos said much of his time as Treasury CIO has been focused on projects at the IRS, and that the agency’s IT workforce doesn’t have the necessary skills to deliver on its long-term modernization goals.

“We’re in the process of recomposing the engineering org in the IRS, which is we have too many people within the engineering function who are not engineers,” he said. “The goal is, let’s find who our engineers are. Let’s move the people who are not into some other function, and then we’re going to bring in more engineers.”

Corcos estimated that there are about 100 to 200 IRS IT employees currently at the organization that he trusts to carry out his reorganization plans.

“When you go in and you talk to people, a lot of the people, especially an engineer, the engineers on the team, they want to solve this problem. They don’t feel good about the fact that this thing has been ongoing for 35 years and will probably never get done. They actually want to solve these problems.”

IT employees at several agencies have gone through evaluations and assessments during the Trump administration. Tech employees at the General Services Administration were also interviewed and questioned about their skills and expertise by GSA and DOGE leadership. GSA later downsized its Technology Transformation Services office and shuttered its 18F tech shop.

In March, the IRS removed 50 of its IT leaders from their jobs and put them on paid administrative leave. Corcos defended that decision, saying the IRS “has had poor technical leadership for roughly 40 years.”

Corcos said those former IRS IT leaders pushed back on DOGE’s audit of government contracts. The agency, he added, spent an “astounding” amount on cybersecurity contracts, but former leaders resisted cutting and scaling back any of those contracts.

“The initial leadership team just said, ‘Everything is critical, you can’t cut anything. In fact, we need more,’” Corcos said. “And when we swapped them out for people who were more in the weeds, who knew what these things were, we found actually quite a lot that we could cut.”

The post IRS tech chief directs staff to take ‘skills assessment’ ahead of IT reorganization 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.

NASA is moving quickly to consolidate up to a quarter of its suburban Maryland campus.

The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers told its members in a recent issue brief that the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is embarking on plans to close 13 buildings on the west side of its campus.

According to the union, the building closures began Sept. 23 and continued through the recent government shutdown. IFPTE said the consolidation of NASA Goddard’s campus includes plans to “empty” or “displace” nearly 100 laboratories — and in some cases, “discard unique and valuable labs, equipment, and materials.”

NASA’s master plan for its Goddard campus calls for a 25% reduction of its square footage by 2037. NASA released the master plan in February 2022.

Democratic lawmakers are warning NASA about the pace of this consolidation work, and raising concerns that relocating these labs could set back research projects across the campus.

Senior NASA leaders, however, say campus consolidation is urgent and will help the agency save tens of millions of dollars by closing unnecessary buildings.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is the nation’s largest organization of scientists and engineers who build spacecraft, as well as tools to study Earth, the sun, the solar system and the universe.

According to IFPTE, NASA expects the buildings marked for closure to be emptied out by March 2026, “a deadline that can only result in significant harm or destruction to NASA’s strategic capabilities and critical NASA missions.” The union said NASA called in Goddard campus employees and contractors during the recent government shutdown to move their equipment and belongings.

“The unplanned and hasty nature of the action is poised to result in the loss of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded laboratory facilities, including sophisticated and high-value equipment that will be difficult, if not impossible, to replace,” IPFTE told its members.

IPFTE said it’s not clear whether this work was deemed exempt from the shutdown, or whether the consolidation activities violated the Antideficiency Act.

“In some instances, employees have been recalled from furlough status and given 48 hours to pack up their offices under threat of having their personal belongings thrown away or mishandled,” the union told members.

House Science, Space and Technology Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) called on NASA to “immediately halt” all building closures and relocation activities. Lofgren said committee staff were told that additional Goddard facilities would be emptied out as soon as Nov. 12.

Lofgren told NASA’s acting administrator Sean Duffy, who is also the Secretary of Transportation, that the pace of consolidation could “irreversibly degrade critical functions supporting NASA’s flight missions,” damage specialized equipment and “permanently kneecap the agency.”

“The agency’s hastily planned moves and closures – some of which I understand are already well underway – risk causing significant delays for multi-billion-dollar missions under development,” Lofgren wrote in a Nov. 10 letter.

Lofgren said the consolidation plans would impact a propulsion lab that is “mission-critical” for the completion of the Roman Space Telescope, one of NASA’s flagship scientific missions.

“I fully recognize the challenges of NASA’s aging infrastructure and the need to modernize and improve the agency’s centers. But that is far from what is happening at Goddard today,” Lofgren wrote. She said she will ask NASA’s inspector general to investigate the Goddard campus consolidation plans.

NASA leadership, however, told Lofgren that claims NASA Goddard is being shut down or dismantled “could not be further from the truth.”

Cynthia Simmons, the acting director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate, told Lofgren that rising operations and maintenance costs and a static budget “have forced NASA to implement efforts to ensure the center’s long-term viability through more efficiently utilizing available space and consolidating or reconstituting facilities.”

They said efforts to reduce operations and maintenance costs at other campuses started over five years ago, and that plans for consolidation efforts at the Greenbelt campus began in June 2023.

“This ongoing work will make Goddard better positioned to lead the development, integration, and testing of NASA Science flight missions,” they wrote.

Simmons and Fox said the campus consolidation will cut Goddard’s annual operating costs by $10 million, and would avoid $64 million in deferred maintenance costs.

“This work is being carefully coordinated with the mission project managers of the critical missions currently in development to avoid impacting schedule and/or increasing costs. In many cases, waiting to reconfigure laboratories or technical workspaces would unnecessarily delay program work and increase mission cost,” they wrote.

NASA, much like the rest of the federal government, has been funded through a continuing resolution for about the past two years — meaning its budget is locked in at spending levels set in fiscal 2024.

Simmons and Fox said these CRs, combined with rising operations and maintenance costs over a prolonged period, have forced NASA to ensure the campus’s “long-term viability through more efficiently utilizing available space and consolidating or reconstituting facilities.”

NASA also is funded at current spending levels through Jan. 30, 2026. Its safety, security and mission services budget, which includes building and infrastructure spending, is likely to remain unchanged in a fiscal 2026 funding bill.

IPFTE, however, says these building closures “are themselves extremely costly and wasteful.” The union says the labs impacted by the consolidation are also by other federal agencies, universities, and private-sector companies.

Lawmakers from Maryland are also raising concerns about the Goddard campus consolidation.

“We believe that any consolidation on the Greenbelt campus must sustain the world-class capabilities of Goddard for future science and exploration missions and comply with all applicable laws,” they wrote in a letter to NASA’s leadership.

Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), and with Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Glenn Ivey (D-Md.), Sarah Elfreth (D-Md.), April McClain Delaney (D-Md.), and Johnny Olszewski (D-Md.) say thousands of NASA employees at the Goddard campus have left this year, both through layoffs and voluntary separation incentives.

“Unfortunately, actions taken during the last nine months threaten the workers at Goddard and their ability to lead the world in this science and exploration,” the lawmakers wrote.

The post NASA advances plan to shrink Goddard campus by 25% first appeared on Federal News Network.

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 reduction in force notices to 77 employees on Sept. 29, just before the government shutdown. On Monday, the agency’s top HR official told impacted staff that those RIF notices have been rescinded.

“This letter is to formally rescind the reduction in force (RIF) notice dated 9/29/25,” SBA’s Chief Human Capital Officer John Serpa told employees in a Nov. 18 notice obtained by Federal News Network. “You are being reinstated to your position of record with the Small Business Administration (SBA).”

The notice gave laid-off employees until Wednesday to return to the office, if they wished to have their jobs back. If not, employees were given the option to retire or resign.

But a day later, the same SBA official said the layoffs will remain in effect.

“Notwithstanding any prior communication from U.S. Small Business Administration, the Sept. 29, 2025 RIF notice and termination affecting your position will remain in effect,” Serpa wrote.

The RIF rescissions and their immediate recall stem from competing interpretations of verbiage in the shutdown-ending spending deal Congress passed last week, which also put the Trump administration’s latest round of governmentwide layoffs on hold for now.

An SBA spokesperson told Federal News Network on Tuesday evening 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.

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.”

SBA’s layoffs were also not included in a federal judge’s preliminary injunction that blocked the Trump administration from proceeding with layoffs during the 43-day government shutdown.

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston, in an Oct. 28 court proceeding, told parties in the lawsuit that her preliminary injunction “does not apply to RIF notices issued before the shutdown,” including those sent to SBA employees.

“The record may reflect that many employees of the Small Business Administration have been contacting the court. But it appears that the RIFs that they’re subject to went out on September 29 or 30, prior to the government shutdown. They would not be covered by this preliminary injunction,” Illston said.

SBA unveiled plans in March to cut its workforce by 43%. The agency expected to cut about 2,700 positions from its 6,500-employee workforce, mostly through voluntary separation incentives, as well as terminating pandemic-era and other term-appointment positions. SBA said it would only seek a limited number of layoffs through a nonvoluntary RIF.

SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said at the time that workforce cuts were needed to reduce “mission creep” and employees no longer needed to support pandemic-era stimulus programs.

An SBA employee told Federal News Network that union attorneys argued that SBA’s layoffs should be protected by the continuing resolution passed by Congress, because their separation dates would fall between Oct. 1 and Jan. 30.

Other unions have also made that case. 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 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. “Given that the department set the separation date for the July 11 layoffs as today, Nov. 10, those actions should not move forward. We have written to the department to urge them to halt these actions immediately.”

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 SBA told laid-off employees they could get their jobs back. It rescinded that offer a day later   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

The post Education Dept soft-launches employee reassignments to other agencies, in latest step of closure plans first appeared on Federal News Network.

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.

IRS employees are getting mixed signals on when they should expect to receive their back pay, now that the longest government shutdown is over.

About 34,000 previously furloughed IRS employees were told earlier Friday that they would have to wait until early December to receive all of the back pay they are owed. But they’re now being told that they will receive the “majority of their back pay” by Nov. 19, which is the latest that federal employees will receive back pay.

“After ongoing conversations with the National Finance Center, the IRS now anticipates the majority of back pay will be paid on 11/19/2025,” the IRS told employees in an email obtained by Federal News Network.

In an earlier memo, IRS employees were told they would receive back pay covering two full pay periods on Nov. 24, and would receive back pay for a partial pay period on Dec. 8. That’s a later timeline than what the Trump administration provided earlier this week. The IRS, however, says these internal communications are no longer accurate.

Nearly all other federal employees will receive their back pay no later than Nov. 19. A senior administration official told Federal News Network on Thursday that all employees at the Treasury Department, as well as several other agencies, would receive their back pay on Nov. 19.

Employees at some agencies will receive their back pay as soon as this weekend, while others will get their back pay next week.

Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, told reporters in a call Friday that the IRS “was able to get people paid much faster” after the January 2019 shutdown, which lasted for 35 days, and called the delayed timeline “entirely unacceptable.”

“To find out that there isn’t an urgency to get these employees paid is really just outrageous,” Greenwald said.

“They’re showing up to work, but they’re still not getting paid. And they are still waiting a long time to see when they’re going to get paid,” she added.

The IRS told Federal News Network, following NTEU’s call with reporters, that it had tested its systems, and expects that all employees will receive their full back pay by Nov. 24.

The IRS isn’t the only agency updating its back pay schedule. According to Greenwald, the Interior Department told its employees that they will receive 50% of their back pay on Nov. 17 and the rest on Nov. 25.

A senior administration official previously told Federal News Network that Interior Department employees would receive a “supercheck” on Nov. 17 that would cover all days between Oct. 1 and Nov. 1. Federal News Network has reached out to the Interior Department for comment.

“We’re really asking the federal government to live up to the November 19th deadline and really respect employees and the urgency of their needs and to get this pay issued as soon as possible, but no later than Nov. 19,” Greenwald said.

The Office of Personnel Management, in its latest guidance, said it “is committed to ensuring that retroactive pay is provided as soon as possible.”

The spending deal passed by Congress on Wednesday evening ensures back pay for furloughed and excepted federal employees.

A 2019 law previously called for retroactive compensation for all federal employees impacted by a shutdown. But during the shutdown, White House’s Office of Management and Budget floated the idea that back pay wasn’t guaranteed for furloughed employees.

Mike Radock, the acting director of the IRS Office of Human Resources Operations, told staff in an email obtained by Federal News Network that the agency’s payroll and employee services divisions “are working collaboratively to ensure employees receive pay and backpay.”

“Periods like this can bring challenges and uncertainty, and I want to thank you for staying connected and supporting one another. The work you do is essential, and I’m eager to move forward together as we resume normal operations,” Radock wrote.

Greenwald said the back pay schedule puts a strain on furloughed IRS employees, who missed two full paychecks and received one partial paycheck. Meanwhile, IRS staff are dealing with a significant backlog of work that has piled up during the 43-day shutdown.

“They’re coming back to their workplaces with inventory that has backed up, with messages on their phones, with emails they couldn’t answer, all the things that they weren’t allowed to do during a furlough. So they’re already set behind because the work has piled up during this time,” she said. “Let’s respect them enough to get them their back pay, so they can start to get their lives back on track and get moving forward.”

The post After mixed messages on back pay, IRS says staff will get ‘majority’ by Nov. 19 first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Postal Service is seeing deeper financial losses than expected this year, but does not expect to veer much from a 10-year reform plan that it is nearly midway through completing.

USPS, however, is far from the plan’s “break-even” goal, and is calling on Congress and the Trump administration to take a familiar wish list of reform efforts that are outside the agency’s control.

The agency saw a $9 billion net loss in fiscal 2025 — significantly higher than the nearly $7 billion net loss it expected.

USPS said it saw increased compensation costs, including offering early retirement incentives to more than 10,000 of its employees, which contributed to higher operating expenses this year.

The agency reported this summer that it spent $167 million in early retirement incentives to mail handlers who work in the agency’s mail processing facilities, and other USPS employees who work in a variety of support positions.

Still, USPS saw better financial results than it did the year prior. It ended fiscal 2024 with a $9.5 billion net loss.

USPS Chief Financial Officer Luke Grossman said the agency delivered 3.7 billion fewer pieces of mail in fiscal year 2025, compared to the previous year, but saw an $848 million, or more than 1% increase in revenue.

The agency has generally raised mail prices every January and July. USPS raised the price of a first-class stamp to 78 cents in July. However, the agency announced it will not raise mail rates in January 2026.

Despite the deeper-than-expected losses, Postmaster General David Steiner told the USPS Board of Governors on Friday that he does not expect USPS to deviate from the 10-year reform plan set forth by his predecessor.

“While we may change specific initiatives, as we move forward, and our execution needs improvement, I do not see the need for a fundamental reassessment of our processing of the logistic modernization strategies at this time,” Steiner said.

The Delivering for America plan led by former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy envisioned the agency reaching a “break-even” point last year.

The agency, however, continues to see multi-billion-dollar losses annually, even after Congress passed long-awaited reform legislation in 2022, eliminating a requirement to pre-fund retiree health benefits far into the future.

“Without a doubt, the Postal Service is in a better place today than it would have been without these initiatives,” Steiner said.

USPS is delivering 110 billion fewer pieces of mail than it did 18 years ago. Factoring in today’s prices, that drop in volume accounts for an $85 billion loss in revenue.

“No business could overcome that magnitude of a revenue drop. So it’s not surprising that the Postal Service has struggled,” Steiner said.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of lawmakers and the Postal Service’s own regulator have urged USPS not to proceed with the next phase of its reform plans.

The Postal Regulatory Commission warned in January that the next phase of the 10-year reform plan would slow mail delivery for a “significant portion of the nation,” but wouldn’t save USPS enough money to justify the changes.

Steiner said that on-time deliveries had recently fallen below “an acceptable range from our targets, with some stakeholders questioning whether the Postal Service could reliably deliver.”

Those metrics have improved. USPS delivered 88.89% of first-class mail on time in FY 2025, compared to 89.45% last year. Households in fiscal 2025 received mail in 2.5 days, on average, in fiscal 2025, compared to 2.7 days the year prior.

“While these improvements should be noted, service is still not where we expect it to be, nor is it what our customers deserve,” he said.

Most USPS customers can expect delivery of their mail and packages in less than three days on average. Nearly half of USPS packages and mail are delivered earlier than the service standard.

Steiner said USPS will continue to find ways to cut costs and increase revenue, but stressed that the agency “cannot cost-cut our way to prosperity.”

“Service is foundational to our success and enables a financially viable Postal Service. It drives business and revenue. I know that we can have both excellent service and lower costs,” he said.

Steiner said USPS will continue to rely on $3 billion in Inflation Reduction Act funds to deploy more electric vehicles. But Republican lawmakers have threatened to claw back those funds.

Grossman said the agency expects to see continued increases in first-class mail revenue, despite long-term declines in volume. He said USPS also expects to see a continued decline in international mail because of the Trump administration’s tariff policies.

In June, the United Nations’ Universal Postal Union said international mail volume coming into the United States fell by more than 80% once the Trump administration eliminated a tariff exemption for small packages went into effect. Nearly 90 postal operators across the world have suspended some or all services to the United States for now.

Grossman said USPS is seeing continued revenue growth for its standard package service, Ground Advantage, as well as lower transportation costs.

Steiner said USPS is asking Congress and the Postal Regulatory Commission “for more flexibility and common-sense modifications in how we’re regulated.” That includes a greater ability to borrow money to fund infrastructure improvements. USPS has maxed out its $15 billion borrowing limit from the Treasury Department.

Board Chairwoman Amber McReynolds said the agency’s $15 billion borrowing limit with the Treasury Department hasn’t changed since 1991, and “needs to be updated to reflect the organization’s current financial needs.”

“For the Postal Service to succeed in the long term, it is essential that Congress and the administration work together to make some of these changes and provide the Postal Service with the same tools and flexibility that are used by other organizations in both the government and private sectors. This is urgent, and it is time for action,” McReynolds said.

USPS has repeatedly called on the Office of Personnel Management and Treasury to adjust what it pays into the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), which covers most federal and postal employees hired before 1984.

OPM calculates what USPS must contribute every year to cover retiree benefits. USPS and its inspector general’s office both claim the agency has overpaid into the CSRS fund.

USPS is looking for great flexibility in its pension investment options. By law, it can only invest its retiree and pension funds in low-risk, low-reward Treasury bonds.

USPS has sought these legislative and administrative changes for much of DeJoy’s tenure, but Congress and the executive branch have yet to take up these requests.

McReynolds said USPS has an “urgent need” for Congress and the Trump administration to get the agency to reach long-term financial sustainability, and that the agency can’t carry many of its most impactful changes on its own.

“The Postal Service must be clear-eyed about the things the Postal Service can control and the things it cannot control,” she said.

USPS is gearing up for the peak holiday season, its best opportunity to improve its financial outlook in fiscal 2026. The agency has significantly increased its package-processing capacity in recent years, and expects to hire 14,000 seasonal employees this year.

Ron Stroman, a member of the board and former deputy postmaster general, said service performance improvements are “setting a strong foundation” for USPS heading into its peak season.

Steiner said USPS, as part of its reform plan, is looking to capture a greater share of the e-commerce industry from private-sector shippers.

“We have the capacity to meet a much larger percentage of America’s shipping needs. We just need to utilize our assets efficiently and effectively,” Steiner said.

Roman Martinez, a former chairman of the board, is stepping down from the board next month once his carryover term expires. Once he steps down, the board will only have four of its nine presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed seats filled.

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