Henry Lee Higginson would be aghast at an opera company leaving its opera house. But it’s true. For murky reasons the reporting has not clarified, the Washington National Opera said it would leave the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after operating there since 1971.

Higginson was a Civil War brevet colonel who, after investment success, founded the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1881. You could get into a performance for 25¢. By 1900 the orchestra had its own home, the Boston Symphony Hall. Higginson died in 1919, but the orchestra occupies that historic building to this day. When in the late ’60s and early ’70s, my friends bought Doors albums and experimented with marijuana, I attended the Wednesday night BSO open rehearsals to hear (and watch) Erich Leinsdorf and Seiji Ozawa ply their arts. I was thrilled when the conductor would stop and order a passage replayed, maybe with a little exasperated scold.

In latter years, my wife and I have had season tickets to the Washington opera. Few locals thought the Trump administration’s appetite for change would affect, of all things, the opera. But it has, like lightning zigzagging through a thicket of branches to nail a squirrel.

Unlike the BSO, most opera and orchestral organizations don’t own their facilities, but instead have long-term, sometimes complex, arrangements with the governing bodies of places like Lincoln Center or Dallas’s Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. Mostly, they’re public-private partnerships in one form or another.

For artistic organizations operating out of the Kennedy Center, there’s the added twist — not of municipal government, but of federal.

And Washington, D.C.’s federal landscape has been changing fast lately, mainly psychically but also physically. The most visible manifestation of the latter: The White House getting a convention-sized ballroom, and maybe a story added atop the West Wing.

Psychic changes we’re more accustomed to. The metronome of policy swings back and forth on everything from car mileage to vaccinations.

The roiling of the Kennedy Center embodies both. Physically, the building now has the name “Donald J. Trump” added to its external signage. The letters are big; you can see them driving west on Route 66 en route to Virginia. I keep expecting a bust of Trump to pop up next to that busy selfie spot, the “Kennedy head” — a sculpture so big and ugly it’s become sort of lovable over the decades. Psychically, the center has undergone a wrenching change in its governing board members and its apparent approach to programming.

The announced departure of the Washington National Opera has drawn enormous press coverage. The departure is all wrapped up in the ongoing turmoil of Kennedy Center leadership, programming-slash-culture wars, and — frankly — artists and ticket-buyers perhaps cutting their own noses to spite their faces in reaction to what they see as Trump depredations. If you cancel a performance or stop buying tickets, who are you really hurting?

You can’t put on top-tier opera just anywhere. It requires a pit for the orchestra, a large stage with roomy rear and side areas for props and scenery. I’ve seen the behind-the-stage rooms at the Kennedy Center. They’re like caverns.

More than that, opera needs a dignified, uplifting place. The Kennedy Center fits the bill, or it did. Its concert hall interiors and gigantic hallways elevate the experience, just like the ornate Boston Symphony Hall with its statues along the sides and “Beethoven” inscribed over the stage add to the orchestral presentations. Despite its lackluster cafeteria and fluctuating water pressure, the Kennedy Center adds a certain distinction and elegance to a city that, 50 years ago, felt slightly backwater.

Big corporate benefactors have kept the Washington National Opera afloat. I often muse that gifts from Northrop Grumman and American Airlines plus individuals like investor David Rubenstein and candy heiress Jacqueline Mars mean I can buy a seat at the opera for $50 or $75. I often buy a Snickers at intermission.

I plan to keep supporting the opera regardless of where it ends up, and I’ll buy a Snickers bar at intermission. The departure from the marble temple on the Potomac is a loss for the city and an unfortunate reflection on the Kennedy Center’s leadership.

The post The Kennedy Center ‘Kennedy head:’ What it must be thinking! first appeared on Federal News Network.

Comprehensive acquisition reform proposed by the Trump administration has broad and bipartisan backing. Designed to strengthen both the military itself and its supporting defense industrial base (DIB), the initiative as outlined in Defense Department documents issued in November has been long in gestation.

Among those championing the reforms: Mac Thornberry, the former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and advisor to Amazon Leo for Government. The Texas Republican retired from Congress a few years ago but remains active in defense and procurement reforms – issues he pushed for during his congressional days.

Looking at the community of suppliers to the Defense Department, Thornberry said in a recent interview, reform must do more than ease a few Federal Acquisition Regulation rules. That’s because of the mass of what constitutes the DIB.

“I think that the defense industrial base is far broader than we’ve thought about before,” he said. That is, it goes wider and deeper than the large, prime contractors who make airplanes, ships and tanks.

“Now it includes everything from communications and batteries and minerals to space and cyber. There are more players than there have ever been before,” Thornberry said.

More than the breadth of the DIB favors reform, though, according to Thornberry. A perhaps more important factor is the innovation coming in so many technologies from the private sector – innovation often aimed at commercial use but which also proves essential for the deterrence and lethality of U.S. forces.

“It used to be that the government would be the leader in making the best tank or the best ship or the best fighter jet,” Thornberry said. “But now it’s often private industry that is the best at artificial intelligence or quantum or a lot of things in space.” Ergo, “If private industry is the best at making a lot of the stuff we need to protect the country, relationships have to evolve between government and industry and also among allies.”

Add in the speed at which the technology front is moving, and the need for faster, more streamlined acquisition becomes more pronounced. In the Cold War era, much innovation was sparked by defense needs in the first place – things like stealth coatings, radar guidance and revolutionary energetics. Now, Thornberry points out, innovations occur whether the Defense Department takes two weeks or two decades to acquire them and turn them into capabilities for troops.

Thornberry cited still another factor in favor of acquisition reform: “How interconnected it all is. We tend to think of the separate military services, separate domains, separate theaters around the globe,” he said. “In a way, it’s all interconnected, one global theater right now, especially when you talk about space and cyber.”

The result? “We can’t just fall back on the way we’ve done things in the past,” Thornberry said. “We’ve got to change. Partnership is the key word. It must not just be a label. It’s got to be a reality for us to take advantage of everything that the best in the country can produce.”

Make room for space

Among the policy updates the administration emphasizes is greater use of the very commercial technologies driving the economy. Much commercial innovation occurs in space, specifically in the burgeoning technologies of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Competing vendors, including Amazon Leo, have launched hundreds of small LEO satellites that robustly fill a missing link in the worldwide communications network.

As for defense, Thornberry said, “The only way we can do a lot of what needs to be done for the country’s national security is in and from space.” The LEO capacity stands as a case in point for the need to more readily adopt commercial technologies.

“If you’re going to provide the best that the whole country can produce for the benefit of the war fighter,” Thornberry said, “you’ve got to take advantage of that commercial part of space.”

He added, “I’ve been surprised, as I have left government, at how much investment is going into space, from both the companies and the investment community.”

Two advantages of technology pursued by multiple companies are the resulting levels of competition and the resiliency of not depending on a sole supplier.

“That is true in space as well,” Thornberry said. “If you’re going to rely on commercial space providers, as we must, then you’ve got to make sure you have the resilience of multiple providers.”

In fact, he said, the Defense Department needs greater supplier diversity in all of the domains in which it operates.

“We’re not going to have one company or two or three companies that are going to solve all our national security issues,” Thornberry said. “We need to have this diverse ecosystem with partnerships of various kinds.”

He added, “And that’s especially true, I think, in space.”

Within the ecosystem of suppliers and technologies in space, Thornberry said, the government will require disparate systems to interconnect. He cited Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s reference to modular, open systems architecture.

That means, Thornberry said, “you can have different capabilities, but they have an interface that means you can put a plug in whatever sort of capability you need to; and that interface is something that’s available to everybody.”

The open systems approach, which he said Congress tried and ultimately failed to codify a few years back, is now needed for projects such as the Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) project and the Golden Dome missile protection program. Both Defense initiatives are essentially integrations of multiple existing systems and capabilities.

Acquisition for speed

Space has become a highly contested environment, Thornberry said.

“Anything that is valuable is threatened and gets under attack,” he said, “and we see adversaries doing that. They have demonstrated anti-satellite weapons. We’re seeing a whole variety of capabilities to deny us the advantages of space.”

Moreover, this is happening “at an incredibly fast rate,” he said. It all gets to a key goal of acquisition reform. Hegseth “talked about the importance of speed, and I do agree that that is a characteristic we have not placed at the top of the pecking order, but we have to now.”

That includes the speed at which commercial technologies get adapted and turned into capabilities. Thornberry called Ukraine and its war with Russia a masterclass in agility afforded by speed of adaptation.

“Ukraine can adjust their drones with a week’s time,” he said. “We’ve got to get better at adapting to meet the circumstances and working through commercial providers is the only way that can happen.”

Ukraine shows what’s possible and needed everywhere.

“A few years ago, it became clear that adversaries were moving at an incredible rate to improve their capability,” Thornberry said. “At the same time, technology in general was advancing at an amazing rate.” He noted that the Pentagon had programs here and there to speed technology adoption. These include the Defense Innovation Unit and the Air Force’s Kessel Run.

Thornberry said those efforts produced results, but not systemically. He said there’s evidence of resistance deep within the bureaucracy then and now. Therefore, he said, the latest effort to reform acquisition throughout the Defense Department requires comprehensive adoption to succeed.

“The tendency is to do things the way we’ve always done them. If we do that, we will not be able to defend the nation,” he said.

Besides speed, the acquisition system must produce a market attractive to companies in the first place, Thornberry said.

The old-line defense companies have learned the existing system, “and they’ve done some pretty innovative things in limited spheres,” he said. “But they’re oriented towards the rules and requirements that the current process gives them.”

By expanding use of other transactional authority (OTA) and, as Thornberry put it, letting off some of the procurement shackles, more defense-focused innovation would flow from commercial companies and startups.

Equally crucial, the Pentagon must find a way to send clear and consistent demand signals to maintain the attractiveness of the defense sector to the investment world.

“They need to have some wins. It doesn’t mean everybody wins, but these folks need to see that there is the potential for a profit in making these investments,” Thornberry said.

He added, “The purpose of all this is to get the very best that the whole country can produce into the hands of the war fighters so they can defend the country.”

As for acquisition reform, Thornberry said, “Will the investors continue to invest? Will the commercial companies be willing to work in defense? Is there a chance for startups to earn enough business to stay in business? All of that is yet to be determined.”

The post Military acquisition reform has important backing first appeared on Federal News Network.

Seasoned federal employees who survived the turmoil of 2025 might be thinking: Should I retire in 2026?

You should make this most crucial and personal of decisions on the basis of where you want to be in life in terms of work and family. Essentials of a quality retirement include regular social interaction, activities that give a sense of meaning and purpose, and maintenance of good health.

Still, it also takes money. Also essential, therefore, is that you take steps to optimize your other decisions with the best possible financial arrangement.

Practical matter A concerns your government pension payments, known in federal parlance as your annuity. Retirement applications go to the Office of Personnel Management. You apply online, but there’s a lot of documentation to accompany your application. One virtue of an online application: You can check its status online to find out what’s holding it up.

And that’s the rub. In a perfect world, you would retire Friday, say this June 26^th, and you find your first annuity check deposited July 6, the first Monday of that next month, or whichever day of the week is on your (former) agency’s schedule.

In reality, OPM takes weeks, sometimes months, to calculate a person’s annuity. The current average runs around two months. The agency has been under stress from its own reduction in force and from the spike in retirements caused by early Trump administration workforce policies. Plus, many agencies have had RIFs in their own human resources ranks, potentially slowing down the movement of paperwork and information.

Keep in mind that the more you’ve moved among agencies, or in an out of government, throughout your career, the more complicated the calculation of your retirement pay.

In the meantime, you do receive an estimated annuity. It generally errs on the low side so you won’t be stuck having received overpayments. You can make a rough estimate of your Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS) annuity from these OPM formulae.

The upshot: Plan your spending activities in advance so you don’t outrun your annuity while OPM figures out the final amount.

Roth or not?

Of course, your FERS annuity is only part of your retirement financial picture. For many retirees, withdrawals from their Thrift Savings Plan accounts will form another piece of their income.

A new option from the TSP board this month, on the 28^th to be precise, lets account holders convert regular accounts into Roth accounts.

Quick review: You pay into traditional TSP (or individual retirement accounts) with pre-tax dollars. Contributions therefore reduce your tax obligation in the year you make them. You pay taxes at the point of withdrawal – presumably in retirement, on the assumption you’ll be in a lower tax bracket.

Roth contributions are paid in after-tax dollars, so there’s no tax benefit during the year when you contribute, but also no tax later, when you withdraw the funds.

Younger employees or those starting out in their federal career should consider at least a portion of their contributions going to a Roth account from the outset. You’ll pay full taxes each year on income that includes Roth contributions but have peace of mind later when whatever you withdraw won’t be taxable.

But conversion from traditional to Roth comes with the tax due now, on the amount you transfer. Each, say, $10,000 that you convert adds $10,000 to your taxable income in the year you convert. That could be a hefty chunk for the IRS. So why should you consider an in-plan conversion?

As with so many financial decisions, it depends on many questions. For example:

• Might you find yourself in a higher tax bracket when you retire? Then balance future liability by converting now when you pay taxes within a lower bracket.
• Because Roth IRA’s do not have required minimum distributions, you might deliberately keep your retirement income a bit lower to avoid creep in Medicare Part B premiums, which rise with income. (Credit to certified financial planner Art Stein for that insight.)
• Do you have enough extra cash around outside of your TSP to cover the tax levy from the conversion?

While it offers conversion, the TSP managers neither recommend nor discourage it. What they do urge: Consult a tax professional before you proceed.

What’s your high 3?

FERS annuities derive from each employee’s three consecutive three years of highest pay. Typically, those are the final three years of a career. But not necessarily.

That’s why if other life and financial factors weigh in favor of retiring during the coming year, it may be wise to proceed with that plan rather than inch the high-3 forward and wait until 2027. The 2026 pay raise proposed by the president is a mere 1%.

On the other hand, allowable TSP contributions are also up in 2026, from a limit of $23,500 in 2025 to $24,500 this year. Standard contributions may go into a traditional TSP plan, a Roth or some combo. Plus, the catch-up contribution for those over 50 jumps from $7500 to $8,000. So $31,000 to $32,500.

And if you are 60, 61, 62, or 63, you can make a so-called super-catchup contribution of $11,250. But if your individual income exceeds $145,000, catchups must go in as after-taxes Roth contributions. (Check out this STWS article detailing 2026 contribution options.)

All this means your decision on whether to retire requires you to balance a potential increase in your FERS annuity, your tax liability and the final size of your TSP account before you cease making large annual contributions.

Again, retirement is not solely a financial decision. Once you’ve decided it’s time, though, make the effort to fully understand the financial implications so you go in with eyes open.

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The post Tips for a 2026 retirement planning first appeared on Federal News Network.

A few thoughts on the year about to close.

Driving on the Donald J. Trump George Washington Memorial Parkway the other day, I was impressed by the progress in the reconstruction of this vital artery. The contractors and the Trump National Park Service planned well, and the road has remained reasonably passable over the past couple of years. Now the trip to the Donald J. Trump John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has gotten easier. Ditto for trips to the Donald J. Trump Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

I’ve always liked where the Parkway runs close to the Trump Potomac River. You can see across to Trump Washington Monument and the Trump Tidal Basin. But, stately as the nation’s capital appears, change and lots of chaos have marked the calendar year about to end.

But seriously, looking at the D.C. skyline, one wonders about the real state of the republic.

If you search “trump timeline,” you’ll find timelines from many interest groups, most of whom feel aggrieved by the second Trump administration. The release of the Epstein files, “undermining elections,” deportation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, reversing energy policies, legal tangling with Harvard University, military activity against Venezuela — Trump activities make for compelling observation. A lot of this is press-induced, and the Trump style eggs it on. Yet norms have stretched.

I would add that only some of what Trump has done is completely original. But he does things, let’s say, in highly original ways. The result is we have two branches of government in contention with one another. The third branch, and the one detailed first in the Constitution, has rendered itself into an observant chorus with no say over the score.

For federal employees, 2025 will rank as the oddest year many have ever endured. It started with the DOGE swarms, slashing their way to and fro. Then came the deferred resignation program and layoffs. Mass return to the office. Cancellation of collective bargaining agreements at several agencies. Difficulties in settling retirement benefits.

So much news, it almost made me regret retiring. The workforce reductions and changes of conditions may all fall within an administration’s discretionary powers. But rough treatment of persons falls outside of decency. Let’s hope it stops in 2026. I remember a time when a new president of a company I worked for brought in a gaggle of MBAs to do cost cutting. The attitudes felt worse than the cuts, and the company eventually disappeared anyhow.

One thing 2025 has taught me: Keep things in perspective. The worst job situations I remember? I can chuckle about them now. That’s what time does. I once secretly flew to New Jersey and back for a job interview — all in a really extended lunch hour. To be honest, the new job seemed dull, and I never got the offer. Luckily, the situation I was seeking to leave changed overnight for the better, the way better. While you are going through cavalier and high-handed treatment, it’s no fun.

And what about the nation you serve? The absence of any serious debate about what the Government Accountability Office politely calls fiscal unsustainability strikes me as the worst quality in Congress and executive branch policy makers.

It’s not as if no one knows that next year alone the federal deficit will add $2 trillion to the $30 trillion national debt. That Social Security outlays increasingly surpass revenues for as far as the eye can see. That healthcare programs exceed the $3 trillion mark. That interest payments on public debt have passed the $1 trillion mark. The absolute numbers are big, and they are worsening when expressed as a percentage of the nation’s economic output.

So my wish for the nation in the year ahead is fact-facing and rationality, especially on the part of so-called lawmakers.

Beyond thinking of any possible policy and programmatic fixes, the government must resolve to become a better steward of the money it does print and spend.

I’m thinking of Minnesota. The federal prosecutor on the Minnesota Medicare fraud scheme described it as “staggering industrial-scale fraud.” As Trump would say, and McDonald’s used to say, billions and billions. The theft — and it is simple, naked theft — is both heartbreaking and maddening. At an estimated $9 billion, it makes the worst armed robbery seem like child’s play. One almost thinks the perpetrators deserve hanging, such is the extent and callous shrewdness of the crimes. But it also evidences a near total breakdown in program planning, execution and oversight — mainly at the state level, but there’s federal responsibility too. Did anyone notice or care that this was going on?

The staff cuts and turmoil have affected constituent service. People I speak to seem amusedly resigned to how places like the IRS, Social Security and the Postal Service operate. Line employees mostly want to serve effectively, but what kind of backing do they get?

The week before Christmas, I stopped in at my local Postal Service office. It’s busy, a beehive of a facility. I recently became president of a very small non-profit foundation, and we needed to move the P.O. box from Virginia to Maryland so I could easily get the incoming donation checks.

On a Thursday morning, only one employee manned the four-bay counter. Efficiently as she worked, still the line kept stretching to nine, then a dozen, people deep. For a reason I only dimly comprehended, I couldn’t complete the transfer because of a mismatch in phone numbers. I straightened it out a couple of days later, when I had the right information. Two clerks were then on duty, and they kept the lines short.

The post My wish for 2026: Rationality in the Trump era first appeared on Federal News Network.