Senators are divided on how to proceed with a spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security, after federal immigration officials fatally shot a Department of Veterans Affairs nurse over the weekend.

Last Saturday in Minneapolis, a Border Patrol agent fatally shot Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, during an altercation between federal immigration officials and protestors.

In a statement immediately following the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security said Pretti was shot after he “approached” Border Patrol officers with a handgun. Bystander videos of the shooting show Pretti holding a phone in his hand, but none appear to show him holding a gun. Pretti was licensed to carry a concealed weapon.

According to the Associated Press, Pretti is the sixth person to die during the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign in the U.S.

VA Secretary Doug Collins confirmed on Sunday that Pretti was a nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center.

“As President Trump has said, nobody wants to see chaos and death in American cities, and we send our condolences to the Pretti family. Such tragedies are unfortunately happening in Minnesota because of state and local officials’ refusal to cooperate with the federal government to enforce the law and deport dangerous illegal criminals,” Collins wrote.

VA employees expressed outrage over Pretti’s death. Coworkers remembered him as someone who cared for his patients.

An internal document obtained by Federal News Network shows that Pretti recently received a “VA gratitude” email message from his supervisors.

“Thanks for staying on your day off and helping out taking care of the veterans,” the email to Pretti states. “You are an invaluable member of the team!”

“Alex Pretti was a great nurse and researcher,” a VA employee told Federal News Network on Saturday.

Doug Massey, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 17, which represents VA Central Office employees, said members are “generally upset and very concerned following” the shooting. Massey said it was a “senseless” shooting, and that Pretti was trying to assist a protester on the ground moments before the shooting.

“I know a lot of nurses, and they tend to be that type where they like to help people. He saw the woman getting pushed down,” Massey said.

Daniel Amyx, a rehab and extended care nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, said he spoke with some of Pretti’s ICU coworkers following the shooting, and that they described him as “very kind and gentle,” and a “great guy to work with.”

“Alex was a dedicated nurse. He was science-minded, evidenced by the fact that he moved from research into becoming a nurse, and I heard that he very much cared for his patients,” Amyx said in a virtual meeting hosted by the Federal Unionists Network on Sunday. Amyx said the Minneapolis VAMC is planning a memorial service for Pretti.

Sharda Fornnarino, a VA registered nurse in Colorado and secretary of the VA division for National Nurses United, called Pretti’s death a “blatant attack on federal workers.”

“VA workers, we’re shocked, stunned and now we’re getting angry,” Fornnarino said.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the shooting a “tragedy,” during a briefing with reporters on Monday, but said it “occurred as a result of a deliberate and hostile resistance by Democrat leaders in Minnesota.”

“This incident remains under investigation and nobody here at the White House, including the president of the United States, wants to see Americans hurt or killed and losing their lives in American streets,” Leavitt said

Matthew Silverman, national president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, said in a statement that “respect for lawful authority and adherence to the rule of law are essential to preventing further tragedies.”

“In an era of rising threats against law enforcement, it is critical that officers are supported, not second-guessed in real time, as they carry out their duties under extraordinary pressure,” Silverman said.

Before the shooting, a comprehensive spending deal for the rest of fiscal 2026 was slated for a full Senate vote. But following Pretti’s death, Senate Democrats are calling on the Senate to pull DHS funding from the six-bill package.

This package currently includes the full-year funding bills for DHS and the departments of Defense, Treasury, Labor, Health and Human Services, State, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, as well as several other agencies. The House of Representatives approved these six bills last week.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), ranking member of the Senate Appropriation Committee’s subcommittee on commerce, justice, science and related agencies, called on the Senate to pull the DHS funding bill from the final package of spending bills for the rest of fiscal 2026.

Van Hollen told Federal Drive with Terry Gerton on Monday that this would allow lawmakers to “dive in and make necessary changes to the Department of Homeland Security budget.”

“There’s no reason that Republicans should hold all of those bills hostage as we work to rein in and dramatically reform the parts of DHS that need to be dramatically reined in. That will be the question — whether or not Republicans in the Senate are willing to do that,” Van Hollen said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Monday that Senate Democrats plan to advance five of the spending bills, separately from the DHS funding bill, before the Jan. 30 deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown.

“The responsibility to prevent a partial government shutdown is on Leader Thune and Senate Republicans,” Schumer said in a statement.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) urged her colleagues on Monday to vote for the full six-bill package that includes DHS funding, to “show that we can work together in a bipartisan manner to finish the job.”

“It is so important that we do so, because looming is a government shutdown — another harmful, unnecessary and disastrous government shutdown if we do not complete our work,” Collins said on the Senate floor.

Collins said more than 80% of the DHS spending bill covers non-immigration and non-border security functions — such as cybersecurity and funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Transportation Security Administration.

The post Senators seek pause on DHS spending bill, following fatal shooting of VA nurse by Border Patrol first appeared on Federal News Network.

© AP Photo/Adam Gray

The hits keep coming for federal consulting contractors.

First, the Trump administration questioned the value of these types of contracts, leading to a significant reduction in existing deals and the slow down of awards for new solicitations.

Now the Treasury Department is taking aim specifically at one of the biggest vendors. Treasury cancelled all 31 of its contracts with Booz Allen Hamilton. The department said these contracts total $4.8 million in annual spending and $21 million in total obligations. Booz Allen Hamilton won $7.5 billion in total obligations from agencies in fiscal 2025.

Treasury says the reason for cancelling these contracts is directly related to a former Booz Allen employee, Charles Littlejohn, who is serving five years in prison for disclosing thousands of tax returns without authorization.

“President [Donald] Trump has entrusted his cabinet to root out waste, fraud and abuse, and canceling these contracts is an essential step to increasing Americans’ trust in government,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a statement. “Booz Allen failed to implement adequate safeguards to protect sensitive data, including the confidential taxpayer information it had access to through its contracts with the Internal Revenue Service.”

An email to Treasury seeking more information, including whether it was planning on suspending or proposing Booz Allen for debarment was not returned.

Littlejohn pleaded guilty in October 2023 to stealing and leaking confidential tax returns and return information of hundreds of thousands of taxpayers.

To date, the IRS determined that the data breach affected approximately 406,000 taxpayers.

“We have consistently condemned in the strongest possible terms the actions of Charles Littlejohn, who was active with the company years ago. Booz Allen has zero tolerance for violations of the law and operates under the highest ethical and professional guidelines. When Littlejohn’s criminal conduct occurred more than five years ago, it was on government systems, not Booz Allen systems. Booz Allen stores no taxpayer data on its systems and has no ability to monitor activity on government networks,” a Booz Allen spokesperson said in a statement. “Booz Allen fully supported the U.S. government in its investigation, and the government expressed gratitude for our assistance, which led to Littlejohn’s prosecution. We look forward to discussing this matter with Treasury.”

Treasury’s decision is unusual

In January 2025, Plaintiff Alarm Concepts filed a class action lawsuit because of Littlejohn’s actions against the IRS, Treasury and Booz Allen Hamilton, seeking “redress for the unlawful inspections and disclosures of their confidential tax returns and return information.”

“For over a decade, the IRS and Treasury Department have known that their cybersecurity safeguards for protecting confidential taxpayer information are woefully inadequate. Federal auditors repeatedly flagged the weaknesses and recommended stronger safeguards. Yet time and again, they failed to act, leaving taxpayers’ sensitive information vulnerable to unauthorized access and disclosure,” the plaintiffs wrote in their filing in the district court of Maryland. “Compounding these failures, Booz Allen, a consulting firm with billions in federal contracts, repeatedly failed to implement adequate safeguards of its own to protect the confidential taxpayer information it had access to through its contracts with the IRS and Treasury Department.”

The case hasn’t moved in the court since April.

Treasury’s decision to cancel all of its contracts with any one company is highly unusual, procurement experts said.

“It’s an overreaction. Even if Booz Allen did something that was subject to suspension or debarment, no one ever gets 100% wiped out from an agency,” said a former federal acquisition executive, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. “You’ve seen agencies put a hold on new awards, but it’s unusual to do this with a broad brush stroke. I think Treasury will come back and rescind themselves.”

The former official said typically if an agency found evidence of a problem with a contract, they can issue a stop work order and investigate the issue before taking such dramatic action.

For example, back in 2012, the Air Force suspended Booz Allen’s San Antonio office after allegations emerged that it violated acquisition regulations by sharing sensitive procurement data. The Air Force conducted an investigation and lifted its suspension by April.

But the former executive said the Trump administration is much more reactive when it comes to taking significant actions.

“The administration has a tendency to take dramatic action. It’s all or none. You’ve seen that with many other examples like when they went after Raytheon for Defense Department profits,” the source said. “I do wonder what other agencies will do next and whether they will follow Treasury’s lead.”

Treasury isn’t a big customer for Booz Allen. Data from USASepending.gov shows civilian agencies go through the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service to contract with the company.

For example, Booz Allen won three task orders worth a total of $20.6 million in fiscal 2025 under the OASIS+ professional services contract. Treasury, through the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, made one award last year, worth $3.5 million.

Under the Alliant 2 governmentwide acquisition contract, Booz Allen won 10 task orders worth $1.9 billion in 2025. Treasury made one award to Booz last year through Alliant 2 worth $24.3 million.

The Defense Department remains Booz Allen’s biggest federal customer.

Booz Allen brough in $2.6 billion in total revenue in its third quarter of 2026.

Heat turned up on consultants

Treasury’s decision to cancel its contracts with Booz adds to an already tumultuous year for the company. At its most recent earnings call in Jan. 23 for the third quarter of 2026, Booz Allen said its revenue was down 10.2% year-over-year.

It attributed a 15% reduction because of the 43-day government shutdown, and it said the federal government’s slower funding environment reduced its revenue by 35%.

“These factors drove a decrease in headcount, as well as a decline in billable expenses,” Booz Allen stated.

Booz Allen also was one of the first 10 consulting companies to come under scrutiny by GSA in February.

GSA said in May this approach has led to more than 2,800 consulting contract terminations valued at $23.2 billion in ceiling value and $10 billion in savings.

Additionally, both the Defense Department and the federal chief information officer have publicly warned agencies against depending too much on consulting contractors.

Greg Barbaccia, the federal CIO, said in June that his office would no longer meet with research, advisory and strategy consulting firms, and encouraged other agency CIOs to take the same approach.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in May told DoD leadership not to execute new IT consulting or management services contracts or task orders with integrators or consultants unless they first justify that the work cannot be performed in-house or acquired directly from a service provider.

The former executive said they would expect Booz Allen leadership and its lawyers already to be meeting with Treasury officials to resolve the situation.

“I suspect they will have to help the government save face and give something up, but they probably are trying to negotiate a deal. If they can’t, I would expect Booz Allen to take Treasury to court,” the executive said. “Treasury is a big agency and reputational losing them hurts.”

The post Treasury cuts ties with Booz Allen over tax records breach first appeared on Federal News Network.

© The Associated Press

For government oversight and accountability officials, 2025 was a year of deep change and uncertainty.

President Donald Trump fired 17 inspectors general within his first week back in office. He has also removed the heads of independent agencies like the Office of Special Counsel and Office of Government Ethics. And the Trump administration has challenged the ability of the Government Accountability Office to review agency spending decisions.

But current and former officials say the oversight community is grappling with issues that aren’t exclusive to the Trump administration. The increasing size and complexity of government, rapid changes in technology, and a tightening of access to information are all long-term challenges for auditors and investigators.

During a Jan. 15 workshop hosted by Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs, members of the oversight community discussed the challenges, both near- and long-term.

“Where I stand, oversight is as important as ever, and I would argue, more important than ever,” Nicole Clowers, acting chief operating officer at the GAO, said during the workshop. “The federal government’s role is undergoing a significant transformation, and whether you agree with the policy changes that are being made, or you disagree with the policy changes that are being made, I think we all can agree that the changes will have a profound impact on how federal programs operate, at least for the near future, and maybe the longer term as well.”

To be sure, Trump’s removal of IGs, the 29 existing IG vacancies across government and reductions in staffing at offices of inspectors general were top of mind for many workshop attendees. Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, said that initial action set the tone for what has followed.

“When an administration walks in and fires 17 IGs for no good reason, that presents the evidence that speaks for itself, that our oversight capacity for our government is being harmed, and there are a lot of other actions that have taken place since then that unfortunately reinforce the challenge that is being presented to oversight and beyond,” Stier said.

A federal judge found those firings were unlawful because Trump did not provide the required 30-day notification to Congress about the removals. But the judge did not find reason to reinstate the IGs, and lawmakers have done little to reinforce the law they passed in 2022 requiring the president to provide that notification.

James-Christian Blockwood, president and CEO of the National Academy of Public Administration, compared the situation to flagging down a police officer when a driver is clearly speeding

“But what if the police officer is doing nothing? What if all the mechanisms you put in place, the speeding cameras, everyone’s seeing what’s happening, but nothing is happening. Nothing. There’s no consequence,” Blockwood said.

“We can go down and talk about what happened with the removal of IGs, and I would still go back to we need to make sure that there’s a consequence, and I think that’s where we need to be thinking about, where does that ultimate accountability lie?” Blockwood continued. “And how do we help those that have the responsibility to make sure that the things happen that need to happen, are doing that job.”

In September, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought also moved to defund the Council on Inspectors General For Integrity and Efficiency.

Congress created CIGIE in 2008 to provide a central organization that improves the integrity and effectiveness of IG offices. It offers training, provides centralized resources like website support and data on IG reports, and oversees investigations into potential IG wrongdoing.

When OMB defunded CIGIE, more than two dozen IG websites went dark. It was another shot across the bow for independent oversight within the executive branch.

“CIGIE has so many statutory responsibilities, but it also does things even beyond that, to help this community stay connected and to work as efficiently and effectively as possible,” Allison Lerner, former inspector general at the National Science Foundation, said during the workshop. “And if we don’t have a strong CIGIE … it’s really undermining the spine of what’s enabled us to come together over the last 15 years.”

OMB has since released some funding for CIGIE. But the White House says it’s conducting a “programmatic review of CIGIE’s activities.”

GAO’s role

The Trump administration hasn’t just targeted oversight within the executive branch. GAO is a legislative branch agency. But Vought is seeking to minimize its role and has said GAO shouldn’t exist in the first place.

The Trump administration has been at loggerheads with GAO over its role in enforcing the Impoundment Control Act, which prohibits agencies from withholding funds appropriated by Congress.

GAO has found several violations of the act over the past year. And its reports note that in some cases, agencies aren’t providing GAO with requested information.

But Clowers noted access issues aren’t a necessarily new problem for auditors

“We experienced them for decades under both parties various administrations, and so it’s not party specific or administration specific,” Clowers said. “So we do have some muscle memory and techniques that we use, but we’re certainly expanding on them.”

Clowers said GAO is training analysts to escalate any issues they have accessing information “very quickly” to general counsel’s office, which often resolves the issue.

GAO’s role has already gained a higher profile over the past year, and that’s likely to continue as the Trump administration reshapes the role of the federal government. Clowers noted that many government programs also continue to grow in both size and complexity, pointing to examples ranging from Medicare to cybersecurity and rare earth mineral supply chains.

And then there’s the brain drain. Roughly 300,000 employees departed government service over the past year, many of them longtime public servants. And Clowers said there’s been more turnover among congressional staff as well.

“You put that together, and you really have a mix for problems,” Clowers said. “You have an increased risk for fraud, waste and abuse. You also have an increased risk for mission failure, [and] the ability of the federal government to carry out its role is in question. And I think this goes to why I believe that the importance of oversight can’t be overstated.”

Opportunities to engage

Despite the immediate crises and long-term challenges, leaders also see the current moment as opportunity for the oversight community.

“I do think we now are in an era in which some of the challenges that I’ve been highlighting actually carry with them the opportunity to get people to pay attention and care more,” Stier said. “I believe that the most important, good thing that could come out of all the challenges that we are experiencing today is a public that cares about the nature of our government, understands our government.”

One of the major challenges for oversight organizations is communicating with stakeholders and the general public about their work. Blockwood said the community should consider how to make their work more relevant and timely.

“Can you be more real time in what you’re doing, the communication around it?” Blockwood said. “How do you offer more transparency and communication to what those findings are? We are well beyond where you can take months to do a study. You can still do that, and it will produce good information at the end, but you have to have other packages and products that have some early findings as to what to do with it.”

At GAO, for instance, officials are considering how to best position its “High Risk List.” The list is updated at the start of each new Congress and includes programs and operations “with serious vulnerabilities to waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement, or in need of transformation.” There are currently 38 areas highlighted on the list, ranging from defense acquisition and tax law to Medicare and the federal security clearance process.

“This is something that’s on our radar in terms of, how do we maybe better communicate what’s on[the list]  and draw attention?” Clowers said. “Because when you get to a list of 38, that even starts to feel like a lot, how to sort through that.”

GAO is leaning into the future amid a major transition for the agency: Longtime Comptroller General Gene Dodaro retired at the end of last year.  Before his final day, Dodaro appointed GAO veteran Orice Williams Brown to lead the agency as acting comptroller general.

Clowers said GAO’s new leadership team has developed a plan, informed by Dodaro. The agency’s priorities include embracing new technologies like artificial intelligence to help streamline GAO’s work. GAO is also focused on building relationships with both agencies and congressional offices, while working to “double down” on quality assurance, independence and nonpartisan work, Clowers said.

And as other workshop attendees alluded to, Clowers said GAO is considering how to best demonstrate its value and communicate with the public about its work through blogs, podcasts and other mediums.

“When you think about the challenges, when you think about the time that we’re at, we could make ourselves small and hope no one notices us and sort of weather things like that,” Clowers said. “Or we can continue to carry on our mission and do the right things, which has always been GAO’s goal. And I can’t speak for everyone, but I can assure you that at GAO, we’re focused on mission, and we’re singularly focused on achieving that mission, and will continue to be so.”

The post Oversight community wrestles with challenges to independence and more first appeared on Federal News Network.

© Government Accountability Office

Interview transcript

Terry Gerton Let’s start our new year by digging into what’s happening with the 8(a) program. It is probably under the tightest scrutiny in its 47-year history. Why does this administration care so much? What are they looking for?

Emily Murphy I think that there are a few things that have converged right now and that have sort of put 8(a) in the spotlight. And part of it is actually what the Biden administration did with the 8(a) program. But if you remember, there’s a statutory goal that says 5 percent of prime contract dollars are supposed to be awarded to small, socially and economically disadvantaged businesses. And 8(a) is the primary tool for making those awards. But President Biden, via executive order and some memos out of OMB, raised that goal to 15 percent, which brought a lot more money into the program, brought a more interest and scrutiny into the program, and led to the first of the lawsuits that we’ve seen in, you know, serious lawsuits we’ve seen in about 20 years since post-Adarand, about the 8(a) program. There was the Ultima case that was decided in ’23 that said SBA could no longer presume certain categories were socially disadvantaged. So that’s what led to people starting to look at the 8(a) program and put things in flux. The other thing actually goes back maybe about 10 years further, which was Congress back in 2013, 2014 looked at limitation on subcontracting and how did you make sure, not just in the 8(a) program but in all the socioeconomic programs, that if you’re giving work, setting aside work to a type of companies, the work was actually being done by those companies. And the old rules always said that 51 percent of the cost of the labor or 51 percent of the costs of the goods had to be done by the small business getting the work, 8(a), woman-owned, HUBZone, service deal, veteran, but it was really hard to figure out if anyone was following that because small businesses don’t usually engage in cost accounting. They certainly don’t have the cost basis of their subcontractors to figure it out. So you never could really figure out whether anyone was complying. And it created weird requirements for small businesses that we were hoping would grow into large businesses where it said, just you’re better off not teaming with anyone, just go it alone because you’re not gonna get in trouble. But then as soon as you’ve become a large business or an other-than-small business, we want you to start contracting with other small businesses. So Congress came in and said, all right, rather than this 51 percent of cost basis, we’re just gonna look at the dollars that are awarded to the company. And if, and we’re gonna start saying that 50 percent of the dollars that are rewarded to a company under any contract may be subcontracted to companies that are not similarly situated. So if an award went to a small business, they and other small businesses had to keep 50 percent of the dollars, and that they could use non-small businesses to do the remaining 50 percent of the work. They could work with other 8(a)s to meet that 50 percent goal and then the remaining 50 percent, they could used small businesses or women in small businesses or large businesses. But the plan was then to use the electronic subcontracting reporting system to track that and see whether or not that was being applied with. That hasn’t happened. But the changes, and it took a while to get the regulations in place to implement those, have now given us some insight to how subcontracting is, it’s made it much more easy to audit whether or not all small businesses, but in this case, 8(a)s, are following those rules. And there was the O’Keefe Media Group where they caught one company on saying that they were subcontracting more than I think they were allowed to under the program. So you had these changes of the goals which President Trump rolled back very beginning of January of 2025, but that didn’t change the fact that a lot of new money had come into the program and so the program was gonna get a lot more scrutiny. It sort of led us to where we are now.

Terry Gerton Well, the Pentagon has just announced that they’re going to conduct their own line-by-line review. What does the administration hope to learn separately from the SBA investigation by the DOD? Taking a deep dive.

Emily Murphy When I saw the secretary’s announcement on that, I thought it was interesting that he was making two different points. The first one was he wanted to make sure that all the contracts that were being awarded using the 8(a) program were following limitations of contracting. But he said that they were really gonna focus on those that were above $20 million. Now, sole source contracts above $20 million don’t go to just your average 8(a) company. There’s a cap on sole source awards, and it depends on whether it’s for goods or services. But it’s less than half of that amount. The only companies getting $20 million sole source awards through the 8(a) program are Alaska Native corporations, Native Hawaiian organizations, tribally-owned organization. They don’t have the same affiliation restrictions that traditional 8(a)s have, don’t the same management restrictions. So it’s a special subclass of 8(a)s and they said that when they focused on those who have $20 million, I thought it was interesting that they seemed to be looking at the larger 8(a) companies, the ones that have taken on more and more of this work.

Terry Gerton Should we read anything particular into that focus?

Emily Murphy I would think that that was the distinction I saw between the general 8(a) reviews taking place at SBA, the requests for review that were put out by Sen. Ernst (R-Iowa) and Senate Small Business and the work that was happening at the Pentagon. I also thought it was interesting that the Pentagon said the other thing they wanted to do was make sure that these contracts were for things that align with their priorities. Now that’s always a good thing to do. You don’t want to be spending money on things that don’t align with your priorities. But I thought it was an interesting take from the secretary’s announcement that the contracts that he was focusing on were those that were tribal organization-owned 8(a) companies.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Emily Murphy. She’s senior fellow at the George Mason University Baroni Center for Government Contracting and a former GSA administrator. Emily, let’s turn to the other agency that’s digging into the 8(a)s, Treasury. They’re looking at $9 billion of performance-based contracts. Where does that fit in this puzzle?

Emily Murphy The Treasury’s looking at similar issues with task orders and others issued under the 8(a) program to whether or not they met the requirements, but also it’s also getting into limitation on sub-contracting. So you’re seeing similar trends across all of the investigations. Well, the Secretary of War was talking about beltway bandits and Administrator Loeffler was talking instead about just looking at all 4,000 plus 8(a)s, Treasury is looking specifically at those that they awarded and that’s a good place to start for them and to make sure that they’re actually meeting, once again, that you’re not having what they’re calling a pass-through where, now one thing I do think is interesting is that this is all focused only on the 8(a) program where the pass-thru issue exists for all small business contracts and so if I were a small business, I’d making sure that any work that I’m doing, I wouldn’t assume that this is going to stop with the 8(a) companies. I think that the 8(a)s, because of that 15% goal in the prior administration are getting a lot of focus. But I would be concerned if I were another small business to make sure that I was documenting that I was following limitation on subcontracting.

Terry Gerton Let’s dig into that a little bit because the all of this activity collectively has sort of raised the level of angst among the government contracting community. If you were a legitimate small business 8(a) provider, what should you expect as these reforms move forward?

Emily Murphy If you’re following the rules, this shouldn’t itself be a fundamental challenge, with two caveats on that. The first one being, pause in the work and awards made to any 8(a) is going to change your pipeline and whether or not you’re able to exist. So if your pipeline was based on sole source awards of $4 million, $5 million, and there is a freeze on awards. That’s gonna put you in a more difficult spot in terms of does the agency that was going to make the award have the capacity to go out and run a competition? Will they do it as an 8(a) set aside rather than as a sole source? Does it need to be removed from the 8(a) program first in order for that to happen? So there’s some contracting challenges that go with that. The other challenge you’ve got is that if you look at the model deviation to part 19 of the FAR that was issued last summer. It changed the basis of award for 8(a) as well and it said that if 8(a) companies are on a multiple-award contract that, instead of doing sole sources to those 8(a)s you should do a competitive award and that if something has previously been in the 8(a) program and you want to instead award it to another socioeconomic group, say serviceable veterans or women, you no longer need to go to SBA and ask their permission. You can go ahead and do it on your own. So those are the challenges I’d be focused on more if I were an 8(a) company that was convinced it was complying with the limitation on subcontracting.

Terry Gerton And what do you think the administration is anticipating on the other side when they get these investigations complete and they see the results are we going to see tighter rules? Are we gonna see a new version of the 8(a) something completely different

Emily Murphy Well, Congress hasn’t really gotten self-involved in the 8(a) program in decades now. SBA is somewhat constrained as to what can or cannot change in the program on its own. And there are stakeholders on both sides of the 8(a) issue in Congress. You’ve got the ranking member on the House Small Business Committee has been a long time champion at the 8(a) program. Senators from states that have a lot of tribal contracting tend to be supportive of the program because it brings work back, a revenue back to their states and to communities that they consider to be underserved. So how much flexibility the administration will have to make structural changes to the program it remains to be seen and how much collaboration that they’re going to get? Are they going to take the results of that investigation and go to Congress and ask for changes? Or are they just going to change the practice of how they use the tools? Because again, there’s a 5% goal for awarding contracts to socially and economically disadvantaged — companies owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. But there is no mandate that you must use the 8(a) program to do that. Does the administration then decide by administrative practice that they’re gonna pull back and they’re going to find other ways of meeting that goal?

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In 2012, a Defense Department inspector general report raised concerns about the limits of signature-based antivirus tools. The Senate Armed Services Committee echoed those concerns, acknowledging that the military’s cybersecurity system could only detect threats it already knew about. Worse, the system consumed so much communications capacity that commanders in low-bandwidth environments faced an impossible choice between operational security and mission execution.

More than a decade later, federal agencies are paying the price for ignoring that warning. The signature-based defenses that Congress questioned in 2012 are still protecting critical systems in 2025, and at the same time, adversaries have leapfrogged ahead with automation, AI, and constantly shifting tactics designed specifically to evade detection. The government’s failure to heed that warning established a dangerous pattern: Reactive defenses are always one step behind evolving threats. Today, that same approach leaves federal agencies vulnerable across multiple fronts — and email, the most universal communication channel, has become the easiest entry point for nation-state actors to exploit.

Chinese hackers impersonated a U.S. congressman — and federal defenses failed

In July, the Chinese state-sponsored cyber threat group APT41 as part of a spear-phishing campaign targeting trade groups and law firms ahead of critical U.S.-China trade discussions. Posing as Moolenaar, attackers asked recipients to share their feedback as part of a ploy to gather information, and included malware disguised as a draft proposal.

It should give government security leaders pause that this email evaded detection and successfully reached its targets. With malicious AI tools at their fingertips, adversaries (and their tactics) are becoming increasingly sophisticated — and more challenging to detect.

For decades, email has remained the leading gateway that cybercriminals leverage to infiltrate federal agencies. Email is a universal communication mechanism, and for federal agencies who frequently engage with the public, it must remain open and available. But recent attacks have exposed a sobering reality: Our federal infrastructure isn’t adapting quickly enough to keep up with threats, and vulnerabilities are growing.

Despite ongoing security awareness efforts and phishing security tests, many people still fail to recognize the risk that can come from a simple email. After all, when you’re using official systems, it’s easy to assume that once a message lands in your inbox, it’s already passed all the necessary checks. And as AI has made traditional phishing red flags — like a suspicious attachment or poor grammar — mostly obsolete, it’s not surprising that a recent phishing is now the starting point for 77% of advanced attacks.

Why government can’t keep up

Government bureaucracy moves methodically but slowly. It’s often the result of complex coordination across layers of hierarchy and competing priorities from multiple stakeholders. But when it comes to cybersecurity, this deliberative pace can create critical security gaps that deepen technical debt.

The challenge isn’t for lack of effort, as the DoD and other agencies have made real investments in modernization. But the security landscape has changed faster than policy can adapt. Defenses must move from reactive to adaptive. Future-proofing federal cybersecurity means embracing tools and strategies that don’t just chase yesterday’s threats using the same methods, but anticipate tomorrow’s with adaptive and modern techniques.

Here are ways government agencies can start to enact this approach:

• Revise BOD 18-01. While the 2017 directive includes several still-relevant protections, it doesn’t fully defend against newer, more advanced threats, particularly those that leverage AI to bypass legacy detection methods. This policy should now be assumed as baseline hygiene, not the ceiling for email security. Updated guidance must reflect the role of AI and behavioral analysis in identifying novel threats with no known signatures.
• Employ purpose-built, AI-native solutions. This administration has loudly declared the intention to move forward on AI, and in the new fiscal year, agencies have a timely opportunity to invest in tools that deliver impact without added complexity. Purpose-built, AI-native solutions offer a practical path forward, helping teams solve a specific problem — like detecting and stopping advanced email threats — without raising additional governance or risk concerns.
• Adopt a multi-layered security approach. Foundational measures like security awareness training and multi-factor authentication are still an essential part of any modern security program. By combining them with advanced, AI-native technologies that can more precisely detect anomalies, provide more tailored, sophisticated training, and better identify malicious activity, these measures will help ensure long-term protection against novel threats.

In this fiscal year, agencies will be expected to more widely embrace AI — a daunting but necessary shift. The focus should be on operationalizing AI to solve specific, labor-intensive tasks that drive mission impact. Email may seem routine, but it’s a vital link in mission execution and public trust. The Pentagon warned us 13 years ago that reactive defenses would fail. They were right. The question now is whether federal agencies will learn from that mistake, or whether we’ll be writing the same warnings in 2038 about the AI-powered threats we’re ignoring today.

Yejin Jang is head of government affairs at Abnormal AI.

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• A top House Republican is calling on Department of Homeland Security officials to testify in front of Congress. Homeland Security Committee Chairman Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) formally requested testimony from the heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Garbarino said he wants to make sure those agencies are effectively using their resources. His letter comes in the aftermath of another deadly shooting by a federal agent in Minnesota as part of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.
  (Garbarino requests ICE, CBP, USCIS testimony for upcoming oversight hearing - House Homeland Security Committee )
• A government watchdog has found that telework is not a main contributor to declines in agency customer service. Across three agencies used as case studies, a new report from the Government Accountability Office found that each had declines in customer service due to factors like staffing shortages or funding issues, not telework. Each agency that GAO researched also faced at least some level of recruitment challenges, where employees either left or considered leaving for a job with more telework flexibility. The report comes about a year after President Donald Trump ordered all federal employees to work in the office full-time.
  (Report on federal telework - Government Accountability Office)
• The Defense Department’s long-awaited National Defense Strategy is a sharp departure from the first Trump administration’s strategy that focused on deterring China as the country’s top priority. The new strategy, unusually political for a military document, shifts its focus toward defending the U.S. homeland and prioritizing dominance in the Western Hemisphere. It calls for securing U.S. borders, maritime approaches and airspace, including through the Golden Dome for America initiative and a renewed focus on countering unmanned aerial threats. U.S. allies and partners, the document said, will “have an essential role to play but not as the dependencies of the last generation.”
  (DoD’s long-awaited National Defense Strategy focuses on homeland - Defense Department)
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is helping agencies get ready for a post-quantum world. CISA has released a list of product categories that use post-quantum cryptography standards. The list shows that some hardware and software products, like cloud services and collaboration software, have adopted partially post-quantum encryption standards. Many other technology products are just starting the transition. CISA’s release of the list is an important step as agencies plan out their migration to the new cryptographic standards. Cybersecurity officials are concerned that a quantum computer in the not too distant future will be able to break traditional encryption methods.
  (CISA releases product categories list to propel post-quantum cryptography adoption - Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency)
• The federal agencies that saw the most employees leave in 2025, either voluntarily or involuntarily, were large departments like Defense and Agriculture. But according to data from the Office of Personnel Management, when looking at employee separations as a percentage of their total workforce size, USAID, the Office of the National Cyber Director and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service top the list.
  (The federal workforce changed drastically in 2025. Here’s how. - Federal News Network)
• The Army signed another enterprisewide software agreement directly with a software provider. The Army added Appian to its growing list of enterprisewide software contracts with original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs. The service agreed to a 10-year deal with the low-code, no-code platform provider that has a $500 million ceiling. The contract consolidates six existing contracts for Appian tools. The new deal includes any new software licenses, maintenance, support services and cloud services task orders. This contract comes four months after the Army signed a similar enterprisewide 10-year deal with Palantir that has a $10 billion ceiling.
  (Army consolidates contracts, signs deal with low-code, no-code provider - SAM.gov)
• Congress is once again raising concerns about rising costs, staffing levels and an expanding mission at the Pentagon’s cost assessment and program evaluation office. CAPE has faced scrutiny over the years for taking on an advocacy rather than advisory role. The House Armed Services Committee even proposed eliminating the office altogether. While Congress stopped short of shutting down the office, the fiscal 2024 defense policy bill required the Defense Department to overhaul how it operates. Now, lawmakers want Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to submit a detailed plan on how the department plans to streamline and optimize CAPE while reducing the number of contracted personnel within the office. Lawmakers said any effort to shrink the office cannot come at the expense of its core cost assessment functions.
  (Congress presses DoD to rein in growing costs, contractor reliance at CAPE - House.gov)
• NASA SEWP is implementing key sections of the Federal Acquisition Regulation rewrite to let users set up blanket purchase agreements or BPAs on top of the governmentwide acquisition contract. The program office said under the new FAR Part 8, agency customers can create the BPAs for recurring purchases from one or more suppliers for pre-defined products and services. NASA said the benefits of establishing a BPA include streamlined ordering and cost savings through quantity discounts and reduced administrative requirements.
  (NASA now allows BPAs on SEWP V - NASA SEWP)

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Interview transcript

Terry Gerton We’re going to talk about drones. The analyst market predicts a $355 billion drone market by 2026. That’s amazing. What is driving that massive increase?

James McDanolds I think the drive behind that massive increase is the fact that we are now getting to a point where the FAA rules for what’s called Part 108 is supposedly going to be released this year. And what that does is changes the scale and the way that drones are operated. In short, it allows drones to be operated beyond the pilot’s visual line of sight, and it allows multiple drones to operate by one operator or pilot. So what does that do? Well, with our current rules and regulations, you always have to have the pilot have eyes on the aircraft, unless you have a beyond visual line of site waiver. Now those are and far between. Now with standard rules to be able to fly beyond visual line of sight. Instead of me having to fly all the way out to, say, Scott City, Kansas to do wind turbine inspections, we could have a drone parked out there at the wind turbine farm. I could wake up from my bed, walk over to my computer, connect to the drone over the internet, and fly it from my home instead. But not just the drone at that one farm, it could be drones across multiple farms across multiple states. Now you don’t need to have a qualified operator be on location for every wind turbine inspection. You can have them be remote and operating multiple drones, making the operation more efficient. And not just one drone at a time, I could be flying maybe four or five, even 10, maybe even a hundred, doing turbine inspections all at once, which if you think about it, decreases the overall cost of operation.

Terry Gerton It seems like a recipe for attention deficit.

James McDanolds Well it does kind of transform in the past. I’ve been able to fly under a waiver that allowed one pilot to fly up to 10 aircraft at once. It does transition the mentality of a drone operator from just monitoring the aircraft and making sure everything’s working properly and being active, if need to, to being more of like an air traffic controller, but for drones instead of live aircraft and for the drones under your control, not necessarily for all the drones in the airspace. So it definitely changes the mentality a bit and it does take a lot of attention and a bit of multitasking for sure.

Terry Gerton And that’s different from the way we operate today because it’s one pilot per drone and mostly within a visual line of sight.

James McDanolds Correct.

Terry Gerton So this kind of opens up this concept of drones as a service. We’ve talked about software as a surface, but now people could buy drones as service. What would that mean in practice?

James McDanolds So it can mean different things. There’s different profiles that some companies are already working with under what we call a beyond visual line of sight or multi on-crewed aircraft systems waiver. And that means that you can now, say if someone wants to have a drone on a construction site and have that drone do a, what we call, project update photos and it takes photos and images once a week or maybe multiple times a week at that location. Well instead of having to have the operator come with it, you could have what’s called a drone in a box system. So there’s systems out there like a DJI dock or Percepto docking station or Skydio docks. So, essentially it’s this box that you power, you put a power connector to it or provide power to it. You plug in the ethernet or you have an internet wireless modem connected to it and it provides the ability for it to stay powered on 24/7. And you can connect to it over the internet at any time as needed. So instead of having the operator come out with the drone and all the equipment each time they need to do a flight at that location to the service provider, they could set the drone in a box at a location, set it, forget it, and then have the operator connect to that aircraft, fly the aircraft, collect all the needed data, and then provide that data to whoever is purchasing the use of that aircraft as a service.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with James McDanold’s. He’s the director of uncrewed technology programs at the Sonoran Desert Institute. So there are some countries that are already kind of modeling this approach. What should we learn from them in their early adoption?

James McDanolds There’s a lot of things to learn. We are in somewhat different environments for the countries that have adapted this faster than we have. And that is in cases like, Zipline is a good company. They are a drone delivery company and they have nationwide operations in a multitude of countries outside of the United States. They have some operations here in the United states that are under waiver that they’re conducting operations for but it’s not at the same scale. Now companies like those and others that have learned how to operate those drones at scale and beyond visual line of sight and multiple at once can take all those lessons learned and safety lessons learned, because now it’s not just one to one, it’s one to many, and it’s at a larger scale and it is in an airspace system that is now more complicated than the countries that they’ve operated in beforehand because countries that may have operated in maybe have two, three, four international flights with maybe some general aviation aircraft here and there. Now in the United States we have thousands of flights every day in the airspace as well as a lot of general aviation and hobbyist pilots out there. So that’s the reason the FAA has had to collect all this data and I think that is one challenge that will still be left is saying okay we’re going to integrate this as best we know with the data we have. We may need to make further increases in safety changes to make sure that we’re meeting that environmental change in comparison to where it’s been done overseas.

Terry Gerton It sounds like it increases security risks as well. Drones, unauthorized drones could be in different kinds of airspaces or for mega events. You may have drones all over the place and how will the FAA know which ones are supposed to be there and which ones aren’t?

James McDanolds So, I love that question, very good question. Right now, the FAA has what’s called Remote ID, and Remote ID is required for all drones, even ones that are not flying commercially under part 107. And what Remote ID does is put a small module on a drone that broadcasts the aircraft’s name, type, altitude, and location. And if a drone does not have that on board and it’s outside of what’s called a free zone, it’s an area where hobbyists can go that it’s pre-approved to fly out, most likely your aviation models, aeronautics club areas that are made for our radio controlled aircraft line as a hobby. If it’s not within that zone and it doesn’t have remote ID on it, it should not be there at all. It should not be allowed to fly at all, so that’s an identifier. There’s apps that you can see the remote IDs that are being broadcasted by drones. So that’s how currently both the public and the FAA can know who’s supposed to be there and who’s not.

Terry Gerton One thing to be able to identify them, it’s another to be able to eliminate them.

James McDanolds Yes, that is true. And that gets challenging as we’ve seen in conflicts over in Ukraine because both sides have been combating with, you know, frequency jamming and other things as well, but … now everyone’s referred to fiber optic lines and fiber optic cables that can be used to control these without necessarily jamming them. Well, when that becomes the case, the only other option is some form of kinetic or even — there’s individuals and companies that have created drones with netting capture systems where another drone will go up, track this other aircraft and deploy a net to capture it and then it’s hanging from this other drone and it brings that drone back. So there’s been some creative solutions that are coming out for those kinds of aircraft that aren’t supposed to be there. In a situation where obviously you don’t want them to be.

Terry Gerton You talked early on about part 108, the regulatory change that’s coming from the FAA. Are there other regulations that will need to go along with that or other processes to implement it that you’ll be watching for?

James McDanolds Yes, and one of them was just released near the end of last year, and that is the process for drone delivery companies when they want to start up a new operations area. They have to do essentially a site survey, a large-scale site survey to say, okay, what’s our airspace? What’s our ground environment look like? What’s the air traffic around the area? What are the obstacles that we have to contend with, both man-made and natural? That we have to evaluate for safety and then submit as a application almost, if you will, to the FAA to say, okay, we want to start operations here. Here’s the due diligence that we’ve done in order to start operation in that area. So even before anything, even before ground is broken, a safety evaluation must be done for the flight operation that they plan to conduct at scale under Part 108.

Terry Gerton You have said, though, that the real constraint here isn’t regulation, it’s talent. Tell us about what Sonoran Desert Institute is doing to train the folks who may be having to do these kinds of multi-drone controllers or other sorts of new technology management.

James McDanolds Well, certainly. So one of the things that we’re doing, and it’s not just about multi UAS controller beyond visual line of sight, recently on December 23, the Federal Communications Commission actually banned foreign-made drones from being sold in the United States. So now it’s not just about having competent pilots to expand to meet this new commercial need that’s coming into place because of part 108. It’s also more individuals who can build, design, flight test, and validate aircraft that are now going to have to be more built in the Unites States and for manufacturers in the Untied States. So that’s one of the key things we focus on is not just operations of, you know, visual line of sight, but operations and control for multitude of aircraft at once, how to handle that, how does that operation mindset look differently? And then even more importantly, how does one get into developing, validating, and producing on crewed aircraft systems? Because that is definitely a need that we have right now in the industry and we’ve had beforehand because there’s not a lot of suppliers out there or creators out there and it’s not just the drones themselves. It’s the components that go into the drones. Drones are like a cool little puzzle that have a ton of electronics and a ton of software that all come together to make these things fly and usable for different industries. So we try to train on that, not just for the drone itself, but also for those individual components and softwares as well.

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Interview transcript

Terry Gerton Mitchell, it’s great to see you face to face. We’re recording from your office on the Capitol today.

Mitchell Miller That’s right, we are squeezed into my little booth here on the House side. We’re three stories up, but we look down on the National Mall if you’ve just walked down the hall. So it’s great to have you here.

Terry Gerton Thanks for the invitation. It’s kind of quiet up on the Hill today, but there’s a lot to talk about that happened last week. Let’s start with the House completing all their spending bills. I guess the biggest surprise was that they got the DHS bill through. What did it take to get agreement on that?

Mitchell Miller You know, it was really interesting, I think, because they were so close to the finish line that they decided, even though there are a lot of reservations on the Democratic side, there were these seven Democrats that said, we are going to vote for this regardless. And that was really the key. And there was also a lot discussion, as you know, about Republicans, about whether they would have enough people, because we’ve had absences. The margin is always super tight. But I think they were confident enough that that was actually the first bill of a series of bills that they took up. So it seems like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) finally knew that he was going to have the votes on that, which is not always the case. And then they were made able to move on to the omnibus with the package of defense and transportation, education, etc. So that final omnibus, so that they could get out of town basically before the weather hit.

Terry Gerton And do you think those agreements that they finally got through on the House side will carry over into the Senate?

Mitchell Miller I think for the most part they will. There are a few items in the overall omnibus that could give pause to some members of the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats. On the Democratic side, we’re still going to have the issue with DHS and whether or not they’re going to go ahead with ICE. A lot of Democrats have said they will just not support it no matter what. The other interesting issue, which was kind of a surprise last week was the House effectively jammed the Senate by approving this provision that says, basically they cannot allow for the suing of the government in connection with these calls that were monitored during the Jan. 6 investigation. Senators were really upset about it, particularly, obviously Republican senators. And so they had included that provision earlier. The Republicans in the House actually went along with Democrats and reversed it. So. They would have to take that out of the omnibus if they are going to pass it. So I think it’s going to stay in there and there will be some grumbling among Republican senators, but I think that’s going stay in the legislation.

Terry Gerton Well, the president said last week he’s anticipating a shutdown again. Does that seem practical?

Mitchell Miller That was also kind of a surprise to a lot of people because there has been a little bit of a chest beating here in the House, particularly about the fact that they actually got all these 12 appropriations bills done. Now, granted, they were supposed to be done by Oct. 1, so let’s not praise ourselves too much. But nonetheless, the fact that happened, there was a lot confidence moving forward. And so when the president said that he thought that there might be a shutdown, I think a lot of people read that as basically an effort, another effort to ding the Democrats to say, if anything bad happens, it’s going to be the Democrats’ fault. So he’s kind of setting the stage just in case that happens. But I don’t think, barring some really surprising developments, that we are looking at a partial government shutdown.

Terry Gerton That’s good to hear. Just sort of one other question while we’re on this topic. The Senate was out on recess last week. This giant storm has really snarled travel. Do they have enough days left to get through the remaining bills, get them approved, get them to the president to get signed in time.

Mitchell Miller Well, as much as the senators have a lot of a pull, they can’t really do anything about the weather, right? So they are dealing with all of these issues that every American across the country is dealing with. I think what will happen though, is the Senate, as you know, can essentially create its own rules. So if they go by the book and they go through everything like they would normally do, they would not have the time to do this. But I think they are going to get these agreements during this week. Where they can speed things up and eventually get this done. Even if it weren’t to be done by Jan. 30, I think it’s going to be within a day or two.

Terry Gerton That’s good to hear. I’m speaking with Mitchell Miller. He’s Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. Mitchell, beyond appropriations, there were other things that happened last week. Let’s talk about health insurance executives who testified on the Hill. What does that mean for future agreements around healthcare policy and the ACA subsidies?

Mitchell Miller Well, that was a really interesting hearing last week because you had Republicans and Democrats kind of in reverse roles in this case, Republicans were going after health executives and saying, why are you increasing these rates? Why is everything going so, so expensively? And then on the Democratic side, they were actually defending a lot of the CEOs and these people that are high up in the health industry saying that they are doing the best that they can, they want to move this forward. And I think part of that is because democrats are still trying to keep things somewhat status quo and get this extension of these ACA subsidies. However, I really don’t think that these ACS subsidies, at least the three-year plan that the Democrats want, is going to move forward. It seems like after we had a lot of really positive developments over the last few weeks, it got kind of bogged down again. So we’re, you know, again, debating issues about health savings accounts. Whether or not the middleman can be taken out with pharmaceuticals, that type of thing. So I think that’s going to take longer than people anticipate.

Terry Gerton There was another, maybe some progress last week on crypto that got sidelined for a while and came back. Tell us about what’s going on there.

Mitchell Miller Yeah, there’s a couple of things related to crypto in the agriculture department, which actually has some of the regulatory oversight related to it. They did advance things and they are moving forward and feel pretty good about it. However, on the flip side in the banking committee, which has done a lot of work related to regulatory issues, especially how much sway should the SEC, for example, have in regulating crypto? Things have bogged down a little bit over there. So, it looks like that this week, the Agriculture Committee is actually going to advance some of the legislation that they’ve been working on. However, in the Senate Banking Committee, which is more of a broader regulatory look at things, that one’s going to take longer, and we’re hearing that may not really get taken up until February or March.

Terry Gerton Are the folks behind these bills integrating the provisions to make sure that they make sense when they finally pass together?

Mitchell Miller I think they are. Right now, I think we’re kind of in that, you know, sausage making stage where they have to kind of reconcile everything once they get out. But as you know there’s been a big push to get crypto legislation and we keep hearing every few months that they’re right on the precipice and then something comes up. There was a big crypto company actually recently that had some reservations about it. So I think a lot of lobbyists in connection with crypto are trying to work things into the legislation some more over the next few weeks.

Terry Gerton Well, there’s new talk starting really just last week about another giant reconciliation bill. You can only have one a year, so they’re starting to talk about one for 2026. What might we see if that effort moves forward?

Mitchell Miller Well, as you know, Republicans are really concerned about affordability issues, despite what the president says sometimes about it being a hoax. He’s been out there trying to speak about it and Republicans on Capitol Hill are really nervous about that right now. So they, they want to include things that will lower the costs of living for people, address housing is one that you hear a lot about, they really want to do something with that, but there is a little bit of a division within the GOP. Some people just think that there’s just not enough energy to get things passed again after the Big, Beautiful Bill from this past year. On the other hand, a lot of Republicans are worried that what will happen to them is what happened earlier with the Democrats when the Democrats passed their large piece of legislation. And that is this whole idea that, oh, if we just get out there and we sell the bill and tell people what’s in it and let them know that we extended these tax cuts, all of these things, that they’ll magically start thinking, oh, well, I’m going to vote Republican again, or I’m gonna vote against Democrats. And I think there is some skepticism about whether that will work politically. And that’s why you hear about this big push for another reconciliation bill. And in fact, OMB head Russ Vought was actually speaking with Republicans recently about that, saying they really need to try to do something. So it’s really going to be interesting to see what happens over the next few months whether they can get some momentum for that.

Terry Gerton So two questions to follow on. One, are there enough specific proposals that would actually address affordability to make a bill? And second, timing. That would come out just before the midterm. So how does it all fit together?

Mitchell Miller Right. I think there is a bit of skepticism about whether or not there is enough specifically to get into a big bill. You know, if you’re going to try to sell another huge piece of legislation, but you only have a handful of things that are in it, you know, maybe there are some ones specific to housing that a lot of people could get behind, but beyond some of these other issues, it looks like it’s a little bit vague. And then to your point about the timing, You know, Congress in this coming year is going to be out a lot because it’s a midterm election year. People are going to be on the road. We’ve already had one of the members of the House who has not voted more than two dozen times because he’s campaigning in Texas. So that type of dynamic is going make it very, very hard, I think, even with the Republicans still in power to try to get some kind of reconciliation legislation passed.

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The Office of Personnel Management’s launch of a new data website earlier this month offered plenty more specifics on how the Trump administration reshaped the federal workforce over the last year.

OPM’s website depicts information and graphics on various changes the federal government saw throughout 2025, such as trends in overall staffing size, telework hours and much more.

But beyond that, the information OPM published contains further trends related to the federal workforce. The data, available through November 2025, provides even more insights into what exactly changed for agencies since President Donald Trump took office.

By total numbers, the agencies that saw the most employees leave their workforce — either voluntarily or involuntarily — were large departments like Defense and Agriculture.

With further analysis of OPM’s data, though, the trends show just how deeply federal employee separations impacted agencies. When broken down by how many employees left as a percentage of the total agency workforce, other agencies’ names emerge at the top of the list.

Notably, agencies that the Trump administration targeted throughout 2025, like USAID and the Education Department, saw much steeper levels of employees leaving, compared with some of the larger government departments. Although the federal employee separations were lower in number for these agencies, they represent much larger portions of their total workforce.

OPM’s data on federal employee separations covers those who quit their jobs, who were subject to a reduction in force (RIF), or who retired, as well as employees who transferred out of an agency, or who had a temporary position that expired sometime last year.

Regardless of the separation method, virtually all agencies saw significant federal employee separations throughout 2025, including all 24 CFO Act agencies.

Federal employee separations over the course of the year also varied from month to month. Depending on the time of year that employees officially separated from their jobs, clearer trends begin to emerge.

September was by far the highest month for federal workforce separations. More than 125,000 federal employees left their jobs in that month alone, coinciding with most agencies’ deadline for the deferred resignation program (DRP). Some agencies delayed their official DRP deadline to the end of December, but OPM data for that month is not yet available.

The types of jobs that saw the biggest numbers of employees leaving throughout 2025 also reveal key trends in the federal workforce data. Notably, governmentwide job series such as IT managers and HR managers are within the top 10 positions that saw employees exiting their jobs, according to OPM’s data.

Other job series like contact representatives also faced significant employee separations throughout the year, most notably at the IRS.

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Beyond the headlines, behind the statistics, real lives are being devastated by cross-border trafficking, with impacts that ripple through families and communities for generations.

Every day at U.S. borders, trafficking networks exploit our most vulnerable – children, women, migrant families and communities already at risk – using increasingly sophisticated tactics to smuggle people, drugs, money, weapons and contraband. For many of these victims, the trauma doesn’t stop at the border – they’re often trafficked for forced labor in the nation’s interior.

The human cost of the fentanyl epidemic, its enterprise propagated illicitly across borders, is likewise unspeakable. Entire communities have been hollowed out as hundreds of lives are lost to fentanyl overdoses every single day in the U.S.

Cross-border traffickers put a literal price on human lives and are quick to discard them if they become an inconvenience. In open desert, treacherous mountains and brutal heat, migrants, including unaccompanied minors, are abandoned in the harshest environments to fend for themselves.

U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) personnel, acting as first responders, give these people hope for another day. Operating in remote terrain in border regions hundreds to thousands of miles between points of entry (BPOE) – at significant risk to themselves – the USBP, with support from the Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue Unit (BORSTAR) as well as Air and Marine Operations (AMO), provide crucial rescue operations and humanitarian aid.

The trauma and loss suffered by the victims of these criminal trafficking schemes is unfathomable. For those brave enough to help – the personnel of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and adjacent agencies – tending to this daily tragedy takes a tremendous personal toll.

More than anything, these personnel simply want to return home safely to their loved ones at the end of their shift.

Securing a vast border

CBP recorded approximately 444,000 migrant encounters in 2025 (fiscal year). Of these, roughly 238,000 were migrants crossing BPOE, underscoring the operational challenges shouldered by the USBP and AMO resources along remote border terrain.

In parallel, federal funding has seen a major uptick in budget targeted for border security, with a focus on physical infrastructure like border walls complemented by intelligence technology improvements that extend border protection capabilities far beyond where walls can reach.

The USBP continues to monitor this wide-open border terrain using a suite of technology and infrastructure assets like heat sensors and patrol operations. False alarms are commonplace, triggered by trivial events – heat signatures of roving animals, for example. Traditional camera and radar sensors remain encumbered by line-of-sight obstructions, and lighting and weather sensitivity.

The time, effort and effectiveness lost to these conventional measures is significant.

There’s a major opportunity to upgrade detection and search capabilities such that USBP can close the gaps – the geographical distance gaps and efficiency gaps – to achieve vastly improved investigative precision.

Precise tactical intelligence

Cross-border traffickers move quickly to avoid detection. Transnational criminal organizations adapt their routes overnight. Border security teams need to respond in real-time.

The USBP can gain significant operational and investigative benefits by improving their capabilities in tactical intelligence gathering focused on network communication used in BPOE trafficking.

Location-aware operations enable Ground, Air and Marine teams to intercept smugglers before they reach interior distribution hubs. These teams are likewise better equipped to recover missing or distressed migrants before they succumb to exposure, and they can deploy support and rescue assets more efficiently.

These advanced capabilities are at the forefront of the fight against cross-border trafficking because they yield precise and actionable insights.

These capabilities provide lifesaving intelligence and ultimately will help to relieve the hard and hidden tolls of cross-border trafficking.

In addition, these capabilities reduce operational risks to USBP personnel, to help ensure they get home safely.

These are worthy goals and the technology to achieve them is well within our grasp. For more information about advanced tactical and decision intelligence capabilities for combating cross-border trafficking, visit www.cognyte.com.

The post Turning the tide on the hidden toll of cross-border trafficking first appeared on Federal News Network.

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With an impending winter storm expected to dump as much as 10 inches of snow — and then freezing rain on top of that — in the Washington, D.C. metro area, the Office of Personnel Management decided late Friday night to close federal offices on Monday and institute maximum telework.

OPM said in its weather status update that telework and remote workers are expected to work, but “non-telework employees generally will be granted weather and safety leave for the number of hours they were scheduled to work. However, weather and safety leave will not be granted to employees who are on official travel outside of the duty station or on an Alternative Work Schedule (AWS) day off or other non-workday.”

Additionally, OPM said emergency employees are expected to report to their worksite unless otherwise directed by their agencies.

Scott Kupor, OPM director, posted the decision on X.

Update (and the final one) – We have decided to close federal offices in the region for Monday. We will update the official status on the @USOPM website shortly. We hope that everyone stays safe (and warm) over the weekend. https://t.co/iJugsRw0iz

— Scott Kupor (@skupor) January 23, 2026

WTOP, Federal News Network’s partner station, said snow is expected to start in the DC metro area Saturday night and then get heavier into Sunday morning. Temperatures aren’t expected to climb out of the 20s, making the situation more difficult.

For federal employees outside of the DC metro area affected by the winter storm, each agency will make their operating status decision, according to the governmentwide dismissal and closure policy, which OPM updated in December.

“Federal field office heads generally make workforce status decisions for their agencies’ employees and report those workforce status decisions to their agencies’ headquarters,” the guidance stated. “Agencies located outside the ‘Washington capital beltway’ should consider governmentwide operating status announcements when developing local operating status announcements. Employees should always check their agencies’ operating status. Agency-issued operating status announcements should include procedures concerning telework, arrival and departure times, and leave requests.”

In previous years, the Federal Executive Boards (FEBs) coordinated weather and other emergency related closures. The Trump administration eliminated the FEBs in April.

The number of federal employees able to participate in situational telework or who are full-time teleworkers or remote workers is unclear. The Trump administration mandated federal employees return to the office on a full-time basis in January.

OPM did issue the fiscal 2025 telework report to Congress in December. In that report for 2024, 1.3 million, or 53%, of all employees were eligible to telework, which was a 2.2% decrease from 2023. Of those employees who were eligible to telework, 1 million, or 40%, participated in some form of telework, routine or situational. OPM said this was a decrease of 3.6% over 2023.

The post OPM makes the call early: Fed offices in DC closed on Monday first appeared on Federal News Network.

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The Department of Veterans Affairs is preparing to issue what’s likely to become one of the largest service contracts in government history as it restructures its arrangements, aiming for rigorous management of the department’s role as a health care payer and greater competition among health care management firms.

The massive contract vehicle represents only the second time VA has signed large contracts with health plans to coordinate private sector care for veterans. The first was shortly after the MISSION Act was signed in 2018. Those contracts are now expiring, and in their place, VA is preparing one large indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract with a total potential value of $700 billion over the next ten years.

Among the changes the department is aiming for is a much more rigorous approach to program management in its “community care network,” said Richard Topping, VA’s assistant secretary for management and chief financial officer.

“This program has been unmanaged since its inception. None of the tools, none of the controls that we are talking about introducing here have been available,” he told the House Veterans Affairs Committee on Thursday. “VA had no ability to manage this program, to drive quality, to focus on the outcomes for veterans, to focus on cost. We’ve now got the ability to do that in this contract. The way we designed this unmanaged program also made it very difficult for industry to partner with us. It made it very difficult for community providers to serve our veterans, because it didn’t operate like any other payer program.”

The new contract, called Community Care Network Next Generation, is meant to change much of that. VA says the department intends to cast a wide net for vendors — creating an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract that doesn’t only attract large, national health insurers.

“We are very intentionally not limiting it to the large vendors. The intention is to open this up to competition, to non-large vendors, to those who might bring regional capabilities, regional capacity, and that would not be able to operate on a national or semi-national scale,” Topping said. “They will incur a cost to bid and be awarded a spot on the vehicle. But once they do that, the vendors who are on the vehicle with us, large and small, have a seat at the table with VA, with our program management team to design the task orders. There are two initial task orders in the initial award, those look a lot like what we have now. But we are going to immediately partner with the vendors on the vehicle to begin to build the next more regional, more adaptable, more local models in our task orders.”

Value-based payment models and utilization management

VA plans to use the ID/IQ for its purchased health care for up to ten years. The contract includes a three-year base period, followed by three two-year option periods, and a final one-year option period. During that time, the department plans to use on-ramps and off-ramps to bring new vendors onto the contract — and remove ones that aren’t meeting performance standards.

And contract performance will be overseen and measured by VA program officials who plan to start implementing measures that value quality care over numbers of procedures performed, Topping said.

“VA will implement a comprehensive quality program for community care providers based on nationally recognized measures from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Contractors will track patient safety events, identify veterans at risk of avoidable visits and readmissions through predictive analytics, and while respecting their choice, guide veterans towards higher performing providers,” he said. “Next Gen will modernize how VA pays its contractors for the care furnished to veterans by implementing value-based payment models. We will begin with episode-based payments for lower extremity joint replacements. As we gain the data and the expertise to manage alternative payments, we will introduce at least three additional models over the performance period of the contract to continually improve care. These models will shift payment away from volume and toward outcomes and total cost of care, which aligns contractor incentives with veterans’ health and system sustainability. We will introduce utilization management. This includes active management of inpatient admissions, emergency department use, concurrent hospital reviews, and high cost drugs administered in clinical settings. This will reduce unnecessary hospitalizations and inappropriate care while protecting veterans’ access to medically necessary services.”

Questions from Congressional overseers

But the department faced bipartisan skepticism during the hearing, partly because VA officials have been slow to detail their plans for the CCN Next Gen effort to members of Congress. VA’s overseers on the House Veterans Affairs Committee say they found out the details of the contract at the same time vendors did — when the request for proposals was released a little over a month ago.

“I understand the VA finds it unprecedented to hold a hearing on an active contract solicitation. I appreciate the sensitivity of the contract, but it is also unprecedented to avoid Congress’s oversight of $1 trillion of spending,” said Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.), the committee’s chairman. “My staff and the ranking member’s staff have been told that some topics are off limits because of the sensitive nature of the contract and solicitation. We’ve tried to create a venue in which VA would feel comfortable to speak candidly to our members, but unfortunately, VA failed to assure us of such candor.”

Meanwhile, Democrats on the committee also worry that the new contract will serve as a way to further privatize VA health care — pointing out that more than 40% of veterans’ care is already delivered by private providers through the existing contracts.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey (D-Ky.) said he worried that the contract will lead to large, vertically-integrated conglomerates driving veterans into facilities they control, and away from smaller community-based providers.

“I don’t trust big insurance companies to take care of anybody. The sole thing that motivates them is profit. It’s not people, and it’s certainly not our veterans,” he said. “We have the right to be skeptical when we are talking about private insurance companies taking care of people, because right now they don’t.”

But Topping said the department believes it can avoid problems like the ones McGarvey is worried about through strong oversight and program management.

“The vendors, our health plan partners on this, don’t make the clinical referral from the direct care system to community care. VA does that,” he said. “They don’t make the referral to the provider or determine eligibility [for community care], VA determines that. VA drives where and how our veterans receive care, and we want to know what we’re buying. We want to steer our veterans to the highest quality, lowest cost providers. That goal is not unique to VA — it’s new to us, but we’re bringing this into this program.”

Vendors hoping for a spot on the contract have until March 16 to submit their proposals.

The post VA readies massive contract for veterans’ private sector health care first appeared on Federal News Network.

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When the Defense Department received a $23 billion down payment for the Golden Dome initiative through a reconciliation bill, lawmakers demanded a detailed plan for how the Pentagon plans to spend that money.

Six months later, lawmakers are still waiting for the Pentagon to provide “complete budgetary details and justification of the $23,000,000,000 in mandatory funding.” That includes a comprehensive deployment schedule, cost, schedule and performance metrics and a finalized system architecture. 

As a result, Congressional appropriators were unable to conduct oversight of Golden Dome programs for fiscal 2026.

The department’s $175 billion Golden Dome initiative President Donald Trump first ordered last January aims to build a network of satellites — possibly numbering in the hundreds or even thousands — that would detect, track and intercept incoming missiles. Pentagon officials have described the program as a “top priority for the nation.”

The effort has been shrouded in secrecy, and lawmakers’ demand for more detail on how the Pentagon plans to spend the initial tranche of funding is another sign of Congress’s limited visibility into the program’s early spending plans.

“Due to insufficient budgetary information, the House and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittees were unable to effectively assess resources available to specific program elements and to conduct oversight of planned programs and projects for fiscal year 2026 Golden Dome efforts in consideration of the final agreement,” appropriators wrote.

Elaine McCusker, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said it is not unusual or surprising for lawmakers to seek complete budget information for a complex program like the Golden Dome that pulls in multiple complex ongoing efforts and includes classified components.

“Congress often requests new budget exhibits and supplementary information for evolving, complicated programs with potentially high price tags so they can better understand what is existing and ongoing funding and what is really new or accelerated in the budget request,” McCusker told Federal News Network.

But Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, said Congress’ request for complete budgetary information highlights a broader challenge with how the administration has rolled out major initiatives without providing sufficient detail.

“Golden Dome is an extraordinarily complex and ambitious program, for which we should expect extraordinarily comprehensive information. Instead, the American people and Congress have the opposite. The fiscal 2026 Defense Appropriations Act and its explaining document appear to appropriately reflect that disparity,” Williams told Federal News Network.

The House passed the final 2026 minibus funding package Thursday, which includes money for the Defense Department. If the spending bill becomes law, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, along with Gen. Michael Guetlein, the Golden Dome director, will have two months to provide a comprehensive spend plan for the initiative. Lawmakers want to see planned obligations and expenditures by program, descriptions, justification and the corresponding system architecture mission areas for fiscal 2025 through 2027. 

The Pentagon comptroller would also have to submit a separate budget justification volume annually beginning in fiscal 2028.

McCusker said Congress bears some responsibility for the delay — budget uncertainty has complicated the department’s efforts to develop the program.

“The Pentagon is pursuing new ideas in how it partners with industry to rapidly develop, build and deploy the myriad systems that make up Golden Dome while also navigating annual delays and uncertainty in getting its budget,” she said. “Congress has an understandable thirst for information on high profile defense programmatic priorities and may perceive a delay in getting the level of detail it seeks, but failing to pass annual appropriations on time has become so common it is a perpetual factor to mitigate. Congress has to accept responsibility for this and be willing to take some risk in providing funds in advance of all the information it needs.”

President Donald Trump said in May that the Golden Dome’s architecture had been “officially selected,” but details about the initiative remain scarce and the Pentagon has restricted officials from publicly discussing the initiative.

McCusker said that Congress’ request for detailed planning, performance and budget information doesn’t say much about the program itself other than “its level of complexity and maturity and the need to develop and convey the overall strategy and projected timeframe for its execution.”

There is no single “Golden Dome” line item in the 2026 spending bill, though it includes billions for related programs that will most likely support the broader system.

The Pentagon leadership received its first official briefing on the Golden Dome architecture in September, and an implementation plan was expected to be delivered in November.

Williams said producing a detailed plan of this complexity in a short period of time is understandably difficult, but added that crafting a plan that credibly explains how its goals will be achieved is “likely impossible according to many experts.”

“Golden Dome is a program of unprecedented, arguably reckless, complexity and ambition.” Williams said. 

“The lack of information is also a result of Congress’s choice to use reconciliation to increase defense spending: The reconciliation process does not provide for the formal submission of budget request materials from the executive branch and so risks exactly this kind of lack of information. Congress should return to the statutory process for clean Defense authorization and appropriations acts to ensure adequate information,” he added.

If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email anastasia.obis@federalnewsnetwork.com or reach out on Signal at (301) 830-2747.

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Federal employees received high marks for their work. At the same time, the public also wants more from them, and federal agencies more broadly, especially around technology.

These are among the top findings of a survey of a thousand likely voters from last August by the Center for Accountability, Modernization and Innovation (CAMI).

Stan Soloway, the chairman of the board for CAMI, said the findings demonstrate at least two significant issues for federal executives to consider.

“It very clear to us from the survey was that public actually has faith, to a certain extent, in public employees. The public also fully recognizes that the system itself is not serving them well,” Soloway said on Ask the CIO. “We found well over half of the folks that were surveyed said that they didn’t believe that government services are efficient. We found just under half of respondents had a favorable impression of government workers. And I think this is very much I respect my local civil servant because I know what they do, but I have a lot of skepticism about government writ large.”

CAMI, a non-partisan think tank, found that when it comes to government workers:

• 47% favorable vs 38% unfavorable toward government workers (+9% net)
• Self-identified very conservative voters showed strong support (+30% net)
• African Americans showed the highest favorability (+31% net)
• Self-identified independents are the exception, showing negative views (-14% net)

At the same time, when it comes to government services, CAMI found 54% of the respondents believe agencies aren’t as efficient or as timely as they should be.

John Faso, a former Republican congressman from New York and a senior advisor for CAMI, said the call for more efficiencies and timeliness from citizens echoes a long-time goal of bringing federal agencies closer to the private sector.

“People, and we see this in the survey, look at what government provides and how they provide it, and then to what they’re maybe accustomed to in private sector economy,” Faso said. “Amazon is a prime example. You can sit home and order something, a food product, an item of clothing or something else you want for your house or your family, and oftentimes it’s there within a day or two. People are accustomed to getting that kind of service. People have an expectation that the government can do that. I think government is lagging, obviously, but it’s catching up, and it needs to catch up fast.”

Faso said it’s clear that a solid percentage of the reason for why the government is inefficient comes back to Congress. But at the same time, the CAMI survey demonstrated that there are things federal executives could do to address many of these long-standing challenges.

CAMI says respondents supported several changes to improve timely and efficient delivery of benefits:

• 40% preferred hiring more government workers
• 34% preferred partnering with outside organizations
• Those self-identified as very liberal voters strongly favored more workers (+32% net)
• Those identified as somewhat conservative voters prefer outside partnerships (-20% net)
• Older voters (55+) preferred outside partnerships

“Whether it’s the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Medicaid and Medicare, the feds set all the rules for the administration and governance of the programs. So the first question you have to ask is, what is the federal role?” Soloway said. “Even though we have now shifted administrative responsibility for many programs to the states and to some cases, the counties, and reduced by 50% the financial support for administration of these programs, while the states have a lot to figure out and are somewhat panicked about it, because it’s a huge lift. The feds can’t just walk away. This is where we have issues of policy changes that are needed at the federal level, which we can talk about some of the ones that are desperately needed to give the states kind of the flexibility to innovate.”

Soloway added this also means agencies have to break down long-established siloes both around data and processes.

The Trump administration, for example, has prioritized data sharing across the government, especially to combat concerns around fraud. The Office of Management and Budget said in July it was supercharging the Do Not Pay list by removing the barriers to governmentwide data sharing.

Soloway said this is a prime example of where the private sector has figured out how to get different parts of their organization to talk to each other and where the government is lagging.

“What is the federal role in helping to break down the silos and integrate applications, and to the certain extent help with the administration of programs with like beneficiaries? The data is pretty clear that there’s a lot of commonality across multiple programs, and when you think about the number of different departments and the bureaucracy that actually control those programs, there’s got to be leadership at the federal level, both on technology and to expand process transformation, otherwise you’re not going to solve the problem,” he said. “The second thing is when we talk about issues like program integrity, there are ways you can combat fraud and also protect the beneficiaries. But too often, the conversations are either/or any effort to combat fraud is seen as an effort to take eligible people off the rolls. Every effort to protect eligible people on the rolls is seen as just feeding into that so that’s where the federal leadership, and some of that is in technology, some of it’s in policy. Some of it’s going to be in resources, because it requires investments in technology across the board, state and federal.”

Respondents say technology can play a bigger role in improving the delivery of federal services.

CAMI says respondents offered strong support for using AI to improve government service delivery:

• 48% support vs 29% oppose using AI tools (net +19%)
• Self-identified republicans show stronger support than democrats (+36% vs +7% net)
• Men are significantly more supportive than women (+35% vs +3% net)
• Support is strongest among middle-aged voters (30-44: +40% net)

Soloway said CAMI is sharing its survey findings with both Congress and the executive branch.

“We’re trying to get the conversations going and get the information to the right people. When we do that, we find, by and large, on both sides, there’s a lot of support to do stuff. The question is going to really be, where’s the leadership going to come from that will have the enough credibility on both sides to push this ball forward?” Soloway said.

Faso added state governments also must play a big role in improving program delivery.

“You have cost sharing between the federal and state governments, and you have cost sharing in terms of the administrative burden to implement these programs. I think a lot of governors, frankly, are now really looking at themselves and saying, ‘How am I going to implement this?’” he said. “How do I collaborate with the federal government to make sure that we’re all enrolling in the same direction in terms of implementing these requirements.”

The post AI can improve federal service delivery, citizen survey says first appeared on Federal News Network.

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A private-sector tech leader tapped by the Trump administration to improve the federal government’s online presence is setting an ambitious goal — overhauling about 27,000 dot-gov websites.

Joe Gebbia, chief design officer of the United States and co-founder of Airbnb, said in a podcast interview Tuesday that the White House set out this goal when President Donald Trump signed an executive order last summer creating the National Design Studio.

“We’re fixing all of them,” Gebbia said Tuesday on the American Optimist show. Many of the federal government’s websites, he added, “look like they’re from the mid-90s.”

Gebbia began working with the Department of Government Efficiency in the early days of the Trump administration. At the Office of Personnel Management, he oversaw a long-anticipated modernization of the federal employee retirement system.

The National Design Studio so far has launched several new websites that serve as landing pages for some of the Trump administration’s policies on immigration, law enforcement and prescription drug prices.

As for next steps, Gebbia said his office will deliver “major updates,” including a refresh of existing federal websites, by July 4.

“It’s working, because we are really pulling in veterans of Silicon Valley from a talent perspective, I think it’s working because this president really deeply cares about how things look, because he knows that esthetics matter,” he said.

The White House estimates that only 6% of federal websites are rated “good” for use on mobile devices. About 45% of federal websites are not mobile-friendly.

As part of the President’s Management Agenda, the Trump administration is looking to leverage technology to “deliver faster, more secure services” and “reduce the number of confusing government websites. “

The administration has already taken steps to eliminate websites that it deems unnecessary. Federal News Network first reported that the 24 largest federal agencies are preparing to eliminate more than 330 websites — about 5% of an inventory of 7,200 websites reviewed.

The National Design Studio is still recruiting new hires. Gebbia estimated that his office will eventually have a team of about 15 engineers and 15 designers.

“We’re still ramping up the team,” he said, adding that the National Design Studio has been able to “recruit some of the best and brightest minds of our era.”

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment where we have a shot on goal to actually upgrade the U.S. government the way we present ourselves to the nation and to the world,” Gebbia said.

The idea for the National Design Studio began when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asked Gebbia to improve Recreation.gov, a website for booking campsites, scheduling tours and obtaining hunting and fishing permits on federal lands. The site serves as an outdoor recreation system for 14 federal agencies.

“There’s a lot to be desired for when you have this incredible feature of the American experience, our national parks. They were being undersold in a way that they were showcased,” Gebbia said.

After working on Recreation.gov, Gebbia said he was getting similar requests from other Cabinet secretaries.

“I started to see there’s demand here for better design. There’s demand here for modernizing the digital surfaces of the government,” he said.

At that point, Gebbia said he made his pitch for the National Design Studio to Trump during a meeting at the Oval Office.

“What would it look like to have a national initiative to actually go in and up level and upgrade, not just one agency, not just one website, all the websites, all the agencies, all of the digital touch points between us, government and the American people?” he recalled.

According to the America by Design website, the White House is drawing inspiration from the Nixon administration’s beautification project in the 1970s. That project led to the creation of NASA’s iconic logo, branding for national parks and signage for the national highway system.

“My vision is that, at some point, somebody’s working at a startup and they go look at a dot-gov website to see how they did it. And we can actually create references for good design in the government, rather than be the butt of a joke,” Gebbia said.

So far, the National Design Studio has launched SafeDC.gov, a website meant to facilitate the Trump administration’s surge of federal law enforcement agents to Washington, D.C. It’s also launched TrumpCard.gov, a program meant to fast-track the green-card process for noncitizens seeking permanent residency in the United States — and who are able to pay a $15,000 processing fee and a $1 million or $5 million “gift” to the Commerce Department.

Its most recent website, https://trumprx.gov/, is still in the works. The website supports an administration goal of connecting consumers with lower-priced prescription drugs.

Gebbia said private-sector tech experts are interested in working with National Design Studio and overcoming institutional barriers to change.

“Of course, you bump into things and all the processes and people saying, ‘Well, it’s always been done this way. Why would we change it?’ I think, though, there’s an incredible amount of momentum behind this — the excitement around America by Design, the excitement around the National Design Studio, and the excitement on the demand side of secretaries and people and agencies — ‘Yes, please fix this for us. We’re so happy you’re here to make us make this look good,'” he said.

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© AP Photo/Alex Brandon

The Supreme Court appears poised to deliver a contradictory message to the American people: Some independent agencies deserve protection from presidential whim, while others do not. The logic is troubling, the implications profound and the damage to our civil service system could be irreparable.

In December, during oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, the court’s conservative majority signaled it would likely overturn or severely weaken Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the 90-year-old precedent protecting independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission from at-will presidential removal. Chief Justice John Roberts dismissed Humphrey’s Executor as “just a dried husk,” suggesting the FTC’s powers justify unlimited presidential control. Yet just weeks later, during arguments in Trump v. Cook, those same justices expressed grave concerns about protecting the “independence” of the Federal Reserve, calling it “a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity” deserving special constitutional consideration.

The message is clear: Wall Street’s interests warrant protection, but the rights of federal workers do not.

The MSPB: Guardian of civil service protections

This double standard becomes even more glaring when we consider Harris v. Bessent, where the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in December 2025 that President Donald Trump could lawfully remove Merit Systems Protection Board Chairwoman Cathy Harris without cause. The MSPB is not some obscure bureaucratic backwater — it is the cornerstone of our merit-based civil service system, the institution that stands between federal workers and a return to the spoils system that once plagued American government with cronyism, inefficiency and partisan pay-to-play services.

The MSPB hears appeals from federal employees facing adverse actions including terminations, demotions and suspensions. It adjudicates claims of whistleblower retaliation, prohibited personnel practices and discrimination. In my and Harris’ tenure alone, the MSPB resolved thousands of cases protecting federal workers from arbitrary and unlawful treatment. In fact, we eliminated the nearly 4,000 backlogged appeals from the prior Trump administration due to a five-year lack of quorum. These are not abstract policy debates — these are cases about whether career professionals can be fired for refusing to break the law, for reporting waste and fraud or simply for holding the “wrong” political views.

The MSPB’s quasi-judicial function is precisely what Humphrey’s Executor was designed to protect. This is what Congress intended to follow in 1978 when it created the MSPB in order to strengthen the civil service workforce from the government weaponization under the Nixon administration. The 1935 Supreme Court recognized that certain agencies must be insulated from political pressure to function properly — agencies that adjudicate disputes, that apply law to fact, that require expertise and impartiality rather than ideological alignment with whoever currently occupies the White House. Why would today’s Supreme Court throw out that noble and constitutionally oriented mandate?

A specious distinction

The Supreme Court’s apparent willingness to treat the Federal Reserve as “special” while abandoning agencies like the MSPB rests on a distinction without a meaningful constitutional difference. Yes, the Federal Reserve sets monetary policy with profound economic consequences. But the MSPB’s work is no less vital to the functioning of our democracy.

Consider what happens when the MSPB loses its independence. Federal employees adjudicating veterans’ benefits claims, processing Social Security applications, inspecting food safety or enforcing environmental protections suddenly serve at the pleasure of the president. Career experts can be replaced by political loyalists. Decisions that should be based on law and evidence become subject to political calculation. The entire civil service — the apparatus that delivers services to millions of Americans — becomes a partisan weapon to be wielded by whichever party controls the White House.

This is not hypothetical. We have seen this movie before. The spoils system of the 19th century produced rampant corruption, incompetence and the wholesale replacement of experienced government workers after each election. The Pendleton Act of 1883 and subsequent civil service reforms were not partisan projects — they were recognition that effective governance requires a professional, merit-based workforce insulated from political pressure.

The real stakes

The Supreme Court’s willingness to carve out special protection for the Federal Reserve while abandoning the MSPB reveals a troubling hierarchy of values. Financial markets deserve stability and independence, but should the American public tolerate receiving partisan-based government services and protections?

Protecting the civil service is not some narrow special interest. It affects every American who depends on government services. It determines whether the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspectors can enforce workplace safety rules without fear of being fired for citing politically connected companies. Whether Environmental Protection Agency scientists can publish findings inconvenient to the administration. Whether veterans’ benefits claims are decided on merit rather than political favor. Whether independent and oversight federal organizations can investigate law enforcement shootings in Minnesota without political interference.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, during the Cook arguments, warned that allowing presidents to easily fire Federal Reserve governors based on “trivial or inconsequential or old allegations difficult to disprove” would “weaken if not shatter” the Fed’s independence. He’s right. But that logic applies with equal force to the MSPB. If presidents can fire MSPB members at will, they can install loyalists who will rubber-stamp politically motivated personnel actions, creating a chilling effect throughout the civil service.

What’s next

The Supreme Court has an opportunity to apply its principles consistently. If the Federal Reserve deserves independence to insulate monetary policy from short-term political pressure, then the MSPB deserves independence to insulate personnel decisions from political retaliation. If “for cause” removal protections serve an important constitutional function for financial regulators, they serve an equally important function for the guardians of civil service protections.

The court should reject the false distinction between agencies that protect Wall Street and agencies that protect workers. Both serve vital public functions. Both require independence to function properly. Both should be subject to the same constitutional analysis.

More fundamentally, the court must recognize that its removal cases are not merely abstract exercises in constitutional theory. They determine whether we will have a professional civil service or return to a patronage system. Whether government will be staffed by experts or political operatives. Whether the rule of law or the whim of the president will govern federal employment decisions.

A strong civil service is just as important to American democracy as an independent Federal Reserve. Both protect against the concentration of power. Both ensure that critical governmental functions are performed with expertise and integrity rather than political calculation. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence should reflect that basic truth, not create an arbitrary hierarchy that privileges financial interests over the rights of workers and the integrity of government.

The court will issue its decisions over the next several months and when it does, it should remember that protecting democratic institutions is not a selective enterprise. The rule of law requires principles, not preferences. Because in the end, a government run on political loyalty instead of merit is far more dangerous than a fluctuating interest rate.

Raymond Limon retired after more than 30 years of federal service in 2025. He served in leadership roles at the Office of Personnel Management and the State Department and was the vice chairman of the Merit Systems Protections Board. He is now founder of Merit Services Advocates.

The post The Supreme Court’s dangerous double standard on independent agencies first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Interview transcript

Terry Gerton We’re going to talk about one of everybody’s favorite topics, FedRAMP. It’s been around for years, but agencies are still struggling to get modern tools. So from your perspective, why is the process so hard for software and service companies to get through?

Irina Denisenko  It’s a great question. Why is it so hard to get through FedRAMP? It is so hard to get through FedRAMP because at the end of the day, what is FedRAMP really here to do? It’s here to secure cloud software, to secure government data sitting in cloud software. You have to remember this all came together almost 15 years ago, which if you remember 15 years ago, 20 years ago, was kind of early days of all of us interacting with the internet. And we were still even, in some cases, scared to enter our credit card details onto an online website. Fast forward to today, we pay with our face when we get on our phone. We’ve come a long way. But the reality is cloud security hasn’t always been the, of course, it’s secure. In fact, it has been the opposite. Of course, its unsecure and it’s the internet and that’s where you go to lose all your data and all your information. And so long story short, you have to understand that’s were the government is coming from. We need to lock everything down in order to make sure that whether it’s VA patient data, IRS data on our taxpayers, obviously anything in the DoW, any sort of information data there, all of that stays secure. And so that’s why there are hundreds of controls that are applied to cloud environments in order make sure and double sure and triple sure that that data is secure.

Terry Gerton You lived the challenge first-hand with your own company. What most surprised you about the certification process when you tackled it yourself? What most surprise me?

Irina Denisenko  When we tackled FedRAMP ourselves for the first time was that even if you have the resources and specifically if you $3 million to spend, you know, $3 million burning a hole in your pocket doesn’t happen often, but even if have that and you have staff on the U.S. Soil and you have the willingness to invest all of that for a three-year process to get certified, that is still not enough. What you need on top of that is an agency to say yes to sponsoring you. And when they say yes, to sponsoring you what they are saying yes to you is to take on your cyber risk. And specifically what they’re saying yes to is to spend half a million dollars of taxpayer money of agency budget, typically using contractors, to do an initial security review of your application. And then to basically get married to you and do something called continuous monitoring, which is a monthly meeting that they’re going to have with you forever. They, that agency is going to be your accountability partner and ultimately the risk bearer of you, the software provider, to make sure you are burning down all of the vulnerabilities, all of these CVEs, every finding in your cloud environment on the timeline that you’re supposed to do that. And that ends up costing an agency about $250,000 a year, again, in the form of contractors, tooling, etc. That was the most surprising to me, that again, even as a cloud service provider, who’s already doing business with JP Morgan and Chase, you know, healthcare systems, you name it, even that’s not enough, you need an agency sponsor, because at the end of the day, it’s the agency’s data and they have to protect it. And so they have do that triple assurance of, yes, you said you’re doing the security stuff, but let us confirm that you’re doing the the security stuff. That was the most surprising to me. And why, really, ultimately, we started Knox Systems, because what we do at Knox is we enable the inheritance model. So we are doing all of that with our sponsoring agencies, of which we have 15. Knox runs the largest FedRAMP managed cloud. And what that means is we host the production environment of our customers inside of our FedRAMP environment across AWS, Azure, and GCP. And our customers inherit our sponsors. So they inherit the authorization from the treasury, from the VA, from the Marines, etc., Which means that the Marines, the Treasury, the VA, didn’t have to spend an extra half a million upfront and $250k ongoing with every new application that was authorized. They are able to get huge bang for their buck by just investing that authorization, that sponsorship into the Knox boundary. And then Knox does the work and the hard work to ensure the security and ongoing authorization and compliance of all of the applications that we bring into our environment.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Irina Denisenko. She’s the CEO of Knox Systems. So it sounds like you found a way through the maze that was shorter, simpler, less expensive. Is FedRAMP 20X helping to normalize that kind of approach? How do you see it playing out?

Irina Denisenko  Great question. FedRAMP 20X is a phenomenal initiative coming out of OMB-GSA. And really the crux of that is all about machine-readable and continuous authorization. Today, when I talked about continuous monitoring, that’s a monthly meeting that happens. And I kid you not, we, as a cloud service provider, again, we secure Adobe’s environment and many others, we come with a spreadsheet, an actual spreadsheet that has all of the vulnerabilities listed from all the scans we’ve done over the last month, and anything that is still open from anything prior months. And we review that spreadsheet, that actual Excel document, and then after the meet with our agencies and then, after that meeting, we upload that spreadsheet into a system called USDA on the FedCiv side, eMass, DOW side, DISA side. And then they, on their side, download that spreadsheet and they put it into other systems. And I mean, that’s the process. I think no one is confused, or no one would argue that surely there’s a better way. And a better would be a machine readable way, whether that’s over an API, using a standard language like OSCAL. There’s lots of ways to standardize, but it doesn’t have to be basically the equivalent of a clipboard and a pencil. And that’s what FedRAMP 20X is doing. It’s automating that information flow so that not only is it bringing down the amount of just human labor that needs to be done to do all this tracking, but more importantly, this is cloud security. Just because you’re secure one second doesn’t mean you’re secure five seconds from now, right? You need to be actively monitoring this, actively reporting this. And if it’s taking you 30 days to let an agency know that you have a critical vulnerability, that’s crazy. You, you got to tell them in, you know, five minutes after you find out or, you know to put a respectable buffer, a responsible buffer to allow you to mitigate remediate before you notify more parties, maybe it’s a four day buffer but it’s certainly not 30 days. That’s what FedRAMP20X is doing. We’re super excited about it. We are very supportive of it and have been actively involved in phase I and all subsequent phases.

Terry Gerton Right, so phase II is scheduled to start shortly in 2026. What are you expecting to see as a result?

Irina Denisenko  Well, phase I was all about FedRAMP low, phase II is all about FedRAMP moderate. And we expect that, you know, it’s going to really — FedRAMP moderate is realistically where most cloud service offerings sit, FedRAMP moderate and high. And so that’s really the one that the FedRAMP needs to get right. What we expect to see and hope to see is to have agencies actually authorized off of these new frameworks. The key is really going to be what shape does FedRAMP 20x take in terms of machine readable reporting on the security posture of any cloud environment? And then of course, the industry will standardize around that. So we’re excited to see what that looks like. And also how much AI does the agency, the GSA, OMB and ultimately FedRAMP leverage because there is a tremendous amount of productivity, but also security that AI can provide. It can also introduce a lot of risks. And so we’re all collaborating with that agency, as well as we’re excited to see what, you know, where they draw the bright red lines and where they embrace AI.

Terry Gerton So phase II is only gonna incorporate 10 companies, right? So for the rest of the world who’s waiting on these results, what advice do you have for them in the meantime? How can companies prepare better or how can companies who want to get FedRAMP certified now best proceed?

Irina Denisenko  I think the end of the day the inheritance model that Knox provides — and, you know, we’re not the only ones, actually there’s two key players.; it’s ourselves and Palantir. There’s a reason hat large companies like Celonis like OutSystems like BigID like Armis who was just bought by ServiceNow for almost $8 billion. There’s reason that all those guys choose Knox and there’s a reason Anthropic chose Palantir and Grafana chose Palantir, because regardless, FedRAMP 20X, Rev 5, doesn’t matter, there is a massive, massive premium put on getting innovative technology in the hands of our government faster. We have a window right now with the current administration prioritizing innovative technology and commercial off-the-shelf. You know, take the best out of Silicon Valley and use it in the government or out of Europe, out of Israel, you name it, rather than build it yourself, customize it until you’re blue in the face and still get an inferior product. Just use the best and breed, right? But you need it to be secure. And we have this window as a country. We have a window as country for the next few years here to get these technologies in. It takes a while to adopt new technologies. It takes awhile to do a quantum leap, but I’ll give you a perfect example. Celonis, since becoming FedRAMPed on August 19th with Knox — they had been trying to get FedRAMPed for five years — since getting FedRAMPed on august 19th, has implemented three agencies. And what do they do? They do process mining and intelligence. They’re an $800 million company that’s 20 years old that competes, by the way, head on with Palantir’s core product, Foundry and Gotham and so on. They’ve implemented three agencies already to drive efficiency, to drive visibility, to drive process mining, to driving intelligence, to drive AI-powered decision-making. And that’s during the holidays, during a government shutdown, it’s speed that we’ve never seen before. If you want outcomes, you need to get these technologies into the hands of our agencies today. And so that’s why, you know, we’re such big proponents of this model, and also why, our agencies, our federal advisory board, which includes the DHS CISO, the DOW CIO, the VA CIO are also supportive of this because ultimately it’s about serving the mission and doing it now. Rather than waiting for some time in the future.

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Interview transcript

Terry Gerton We’re going to talk about this case, Siemens Government Technologies. But before we dive into the case and the court’s decision, walk us through the basic premise here, which is about energy savings performance contracts. How do they work?

Zach Prince Sure, so the government, you know, it has a lot of facilities around the country and around the world. Many of those facilities are a little dated, let’s put it nicely, where they waste huge amounts of energy just because the infrastructure is built decades and decades and decades ago. So as part of a way to try to modernize and save energy, they’ve developed two different mechanisms that are the real workhorses of modernizing in this regard. There are what we’re dealing with here, which are energy savings performance contracts, and then their utility energy savings contracts, or UESCs. This is more of the former, not the latter, but those are really the two mechanisms. So the way that these work is there’s an IDIQ that will be held by a number of energy savings companies. Here Siemens is one of them. The interested agency will go out and ask for quotes to put together a preliminary audit, or a preliminary assessment rather, which is really a high level review of the federal facility and suggestion of ways that the government can save money and the cost of doing it. This always has to be not just cost neutral, but has to have an actual savings to the government. And that savings is passed on then to the contractor. The preliminary assessment is itself an expensive process, but it’s not nearly as expensive as the next part of this, which is if the government is interested in the preliminary assessment, they’ll ask for an investment grade audit or IGA, which is part of the task order award for the work itself. That can be millions of dollars. I mean, it takes tons of engineering time and real work from the contractor. And work that sometimes doesn’t always get compensated if there’s no ultimate award.

Terry Gerton So it sounds like there are a lot of ways that these projects could get derailed. What specifically went wrong in the Siemens case?

Zach Prince Well, it’s hard to tell reading just from the court’s decision, but it appeared that DLA, which was administering this large project at the Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, changed some requirements after that they had already received the first round of the investment grade audit from Siemens. They seemingly changed a ton of the assumptions that were used by Siemens to calculate the actual cost savings. And, as Siemens put it, required a full scale investment grade audit to be conducted again with a number of iterations that ended up costing somewhere north of $2 million.

Terry Gerton That change in assumptions is interesting, because as I read the case, it was almost two years from the initial request to Siemens’ submission of their audit. And so many things could have changed. Does that make these kinds of projects a risky proposition?

Zach Prince They make them complicated. And the agency really needs to be focused on getting these projects done, getting the investment grade audit to be based on facts, not things that could rapidly change, which is I think what happened here, so that they understand what they’re getting or what they might be getting and can execute the project.

Terry Gerton So Siemens brought the case in the Court of Federal Claims. What was their argument?

Zach Prince So as sort of the background to this, the IGA often is not compensated when there’s not a task order and companies know that this is a risk that they’re taking. The preliminary assessment is almost never compensated unless there’s a task order. So they know it’s a risk, but this is an unusual case because of how many iterations they went through with DLA just to then have the project totally canceled with nothing. So, they brought some pretty interesting challenges here. They frame this as a bid protest, primarily, as well as a breach of contract. So there was a contract, this IDIQ, with a task order for the preliminary assessment. That’s where they brought a contract claim under. They said the government breached its obligations to administer a task order for the work itself under that IDIQ, so that’s a contract dispute. They also said this was an improper administration of a task order award process where the government breached implied obligations to proceed in good faith and breached a variety of other statutes that really weren’t discussed in the case. But they framed it as both contract disputes and a bid protest.

Terry Gerton Speaking with Zach Prince, he’s a partner at Haynes Boone. How did the government respond to those allegations?

Zach Prince Well, the government just asked for the whole thing to be dismissed, which it often does. The bid protest issues are the ones that they really focused on and I thought were of particular interest for this case because it was really a novel approach to try to get compensation by Siemens. The government argued that there can’t be a bid protest here under the court’s bid protest jurisdiction because of what’s known as the FASA task order bar. It is, there is some limit to the jurisdiction of the Court of Federal Claims to hear disputes, bid protest disputes involving task orders. They either have no jurisdiction anywhere to have such bid protests or they have to go to GAO. But that limit has been hotly disputed and the subject of several Federal Circuit decisions and the government lost that claim here.

Terry Gerton And what else did the court have to say about Siemen’s creativity?

Zach Prince The court was more focused on the government’s attempt to trap Siemens by saying that either, if there’s a contract, an express contract, then they can’t bring an implied in fact contract, which is one of their arguments they had brought as a bid protest, essentially. But also the government said there is no express contract that gives rise to relief. So as the court put it, it’s heads, I win, tails you lose-type argument the government’s trying to make and it wasn’t going to pass muster here at least. The government might ultimately prevail, but this is a very preliminary stage and the court was not willing to dismiss here.

Terry Gerton So as you look at this case, what lessons do you draw for agencies and contractors around these kinds of projects?

Zach Prince Yeah, it’s really tricky and I’ve dealt with several of these contracts before. The contracting agencies often just don’t have money to fund the preliminary assessment and maybe don’t money to fund the investment grade audit either, hoping, everybody’s hoping together, that it will ultimately turn into a task order for the work. And these task orders might be massive, $50, $100+ million. We’re talking about multi-year projects for modernizing large, large facilities. But you can’t just proceed on hope. It always makes me as outside counsel nervous, but you as a government contractor or as a government agency, you have to have a good relationship with your contracted counterparts. And those relationships can really carry the day to get folks compensated when they otherwise might not have. You find money at the end of a fiscal year and you come up with some mods and make the contractor whole because you know you have to do business with them again. And you appreciate the fairness of it. On the contractor side, you have to recognize that there is risk here. And if you’re not gonna get an actual written commitment from the government, and not just the government of course, the authorized person from the government, to fund one of these projects, you might be left holding the bag. So they can be lucrative projects for sure, but there is risks. And, as always, the government has to proceed in good faith, which is Siemens’ primary argument here is, the government just kept shifting around requirements, ignoring the fact that it was going to cost millions to do that, and then tried to leave Siemens with nothing. But you have to proceed with these projects with eyes wide open.

Terry Gerton You mentioned risk there, especially for the bidders, but it seems like there’s risk for all the parties and it’s not always clear that the potential revenue down the line will offset some of that risk. Is there a better way to structure these kinds of projects that would help everybody in the long run?

Zach Prince That’s a great question. And I’m not just stalling because it’s really complicated and I don’t know the right answer. This is a really interesting mechanism to fund these types of projects. And the government likes it because they’re not really left paying for anything. If they save money and those savings pay the contractor ultimately, and even in the utility version of these types contracts where it’s structured a bit differently, it’s still not coming out of present appropriations generally. It is a savings that the government’s getting ultimately on its energy bills, and that’s being passed on to pay for the project. That’s a great way to do business. If the government doesn’t have to actually pay for anything, they’re not subject to ongoing appropriation problems, and they still can get what they need, that’s fantastic. The problem is just at the outset of these projects, there are all sorts of complications that really need to be considered carefully by all parties.

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