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Swiss banking giant UBS, with assets under management (AuM) of up to $7 trillion, is set to launch Bitcoin trading for some of its clients. This comes amid predictions that regulatory clarity and broader adoption could send the BTC price to as high as $200,000.
UBS To Offer Bitcoin Trading To Some Wealth Clients
Bloomberg reported that UBS is planning to launch crypto trading for some of its wealth clients, starting with its private bank clients in Switzerland. The bank will reportedly begin by offering these clients the opportunity to invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum. At the same time, the crypto offering could further expand to clients in the Pacific-Asia region and the U.S.
The banking giant is currently in discussions with potential partners, and there is no clear timeline for when it could launch Bitcoin and Ethereum trading for clients. This move is said to be partly due to increased demand from wealth clients for crypto exposure. UBS also faces increased competition as other Wall Street giants are working to offer crypto trading.
Morgan Stanley, in partnership with Zerohash, announced plans to launch crypto trading in the first half of this year, starting with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. The banking giant may soon also be able to offer its crypto products, as it has filed with the SEC to launch spot BTC, ETH, and SOL ETFs.
Furthermore, JPMorgan, another of UBS’ competitors, is considering offering crypto trading to institutional clients, although this plan is still in the early stages. The bank already accepts Bitcoin and Ethereum as collateral from its clients. Last year, it also filed to offer BTC structured notes that will track the performance of the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF.
Can Bank’s Entry Trigger A BTC Rally To $200,000
Kevin O’Leary predicted that Bitcoin could rally to between $150,000 and $200,000 this year, driven by the passage of the CLARITY Act. His prediction came just as White House Crypto Czar David Sacks said banks would fully enter crypto once the bill passes. As such, there is a possibility that BTC could reach this $200,000 psychological level in anticipation of the amount of new capital that could flow into BTC from these banks once the bill passes.
BitMine’s Chairman, Tom Lee, also predicted during a CNBC interview that Bitcoin could reach between $200,000 and $250,000 this year, partly due to growing institutional adoption by Wall Street giants. Meanwhile, Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said that a BTC rally to $200,000 is the “most obvious thing in the world” to him.
At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price is trading at around $89,600, up in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
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
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.
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.
How Do Non-Human Identities (NHIs) Shape the Future of Cybersecurity? Have you ever considered the risks associated with the identities of machines in your network? With cybersecurity professionals continue to confront increasingly complex threats, a crucial, often overlooked area is the management of Non-Human Identities (NHIs) and their associated secrets. Integrating NHI management into an […]
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 Supreme Court is seen during oral arguments over state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
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.
FILE - This June 24, 2016 file photo, showing the logo of German industrial conglomerate Siemens at their headquarters in Munich, Germany. France's Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Wednesday Feb. 6, 2019, says EU authorities have decided to reject a merger between France's Alstom and Germany's Siemens blocking the creation of a European rail giant.(AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, FILE)
Scammers are increasingly using visually stylized QR codes to deliver phishing links, Help Net Security reports.
QR code phishing (quishing) is already more difficult to detect, since these codes deliver links without a visible URL. Attackers are now using QR codes with colors, shapes, and logos woven into the code’s pattern.
Forty percent of employees have never received cybersecurity training, according to a new report from Yubico. That number rises to nearly sixty percent for employees working for small businesses.
The Small Business Administration suspended more than 1,000 companies in the 8(a) program. SBA made the decision after it deemed those small businesses non-compliant with its financial data request from December.
“Suspended firms have 45 days to appeal the suspension,” said Maggie Clemmons, an SBA spokesperson in an email to Federal News Network. “SBA will release further information on the suspensions in the coming days.”
The suspension comes after SBA sent a letter to more than 4,300 8(a) firms in December seeking 13 different data, ranging from a list of the company’s employees to bank statements for the last three fiscal years to a copy of all 8(a) contracts, as part of its ongoing audit of the program.
Data compiled by GovContractPros, an advisory services firm specializing in federal procurement, found that SBA admitted 753 companies into the 8(a) program in fiscal 2024. Of those 753 firms, the company says SBA suspended 156 of them.
In fiscal 2025, SBA says it admitted only 65 companies into the 8(a) firm. GovContractPros says SBA suspended 10 of those firms, including nine which joined the program after the Trump administration began leading SBA.
Lawyers that represent small businesses say SBA issued the suspensions on Wednesday based on the fact that the 8(a) firms either failed to submit their responses on or before the Jan. 19 deadline or submitted incomplete responses.
“At least some firms that submitted complete data call responses only one day late — on Jan. 20, and before any suspension notices were issued — often due to errors in the government-operated MySBA Certifications portal, nonetheless received suspension notices, indicating that SBA is taking a strict approach to alleged non-compliance with the filing deadline,” wrote Meghan Leemon and Matt Feinberg, partners with the law firm Piliero Mazza, on a blog post. “Firms subject to 8(a) suspension are not permitted to receive new competitive or sole-source 8(a) awards. However, firms are required to complete existing 8(a) contracts, and federal agencies may exercise options on those contracts, even while a firm is suspended, unless otherwise prohibited by statute or regulation.”
SBA’s new clarifying guidance
The suspensions are part of a broad Trump administration effort to audit the 8(a) program and address allegations of fraud and abuse. SBA’s data call was one of several ongoing audits to now include the Treasury Department, the General Services Administration and, as of last week, now the Department of Defense.
“The Biden administration expanded and then abused the 8(a) program to hand out billions in taxpayer-funded government contracts to favored minorities at the direct expense of honest small businesses, which is why we ended the practice on day one,” said SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler in a press release. “Since then, the Trump SBA has been working to reverse the damage – and today, we’re reiterating one simple fact: the Biden-era practice of discriminating against white Americans is over, and reforms to enshrine that fact are well underway. The SBA is ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in federal contracting – and our programs will remain open to all eligible job creators in compliance with federal law.”
In addition to suspending nearly a quarter of the 8(a) program participants, SBA issued new guidance today clarifying that the small business development program “is open to job creators of every race – consistent with court orders, notices from the U.S Department of Justice (DOJ), and President [Donald] Trump’s broader effort to eliminate DEI across the federal government – and that any race-based presumptions of social disadvantage have been inoperative since 2023.”
The guidance outlines new ways the SBA will manage the program.
It says it will administer the 8(a) program based on race neutral requirements and there will be no presumptive preference given to anyone.
SBA also will no longer approve the use of “socially disadvantage narratives” as a way to get into the program. It removed from its website the Biden-era “Guide for Demonstrating Social Disadvantage.”
Finally, SBA will consider several factors when determining eligibility for the 8(a) program, including whether the individual has been a “victim of illegal or radical DEI policies or illegal affirmative action policies or has otherwise been the victim of discriminatory practices such as race-based quotas, set asides or hiring targets, in each case by government and non-government actors.”
SBA says these steps are in reaction to the “dramatic expansion” under the Biden administration of companies in the 8(a) program.
Since January 2025, SBA accepted just 65 new 8(a) firms into the program, compared to over 2,100 who were accepted during the four years of the Biden administration.
Undermining the 8(a) program?
Jackie Robinson-Burnette, a former SBA associate administrator in the Office of Government Contracting and Business Development during the Biden administration, wrote on LinkedIn that this change isn’t a small tweak, but it’s re‑anchoring of the program’s foundation.
“It’s important to reform the 8(a) program without crushing the firms the program was designed to help,” wrote Robinson-Burnette, who now is the CEO of Senior Executive Strategic Solutions. “Are we dismantling and putting a sledgehammer to the program to curtail spending $20 million-plus on 8(a) sole source contracts or is it about something else?”
John Shoraka, a former associate administrator of government contracting and business development at SBA and now the co-founder and managing director of GovContractPros, said the SBA and now DoD’s audits are part of a concerted effort to undermine the confidence in the 8(a) program.
“It seems to be one initiative after another initiative, sort of in a very sequenced flow of events to undermine the program and sort of put the brakes on the program,” he said. “I think there’s a perception, and, it’s the wrong perception, that the 8(a) program is, at its core, a DEI program. I honestly don’t think that the administration believes there is significantly more fraud in the 8(a) program than any other contracting program. In fact, the data shows, if you look at inspector general cases or if you look at Department of Justice cases, the instances of fraud in the set-aside programs and particularly the 8(a) program, are actually significantly lower as opposed to across the entire federal government. So when we focus on fraud, waste and abuse in the 8(a) program, I think it’s just raising the flag. They can’t really say we want to kill this program because it’s DEI, they need to identify some sort of red flag to point to and say, ‘Ah-a, we told you this program was fraudulent, and therefore we need to terminate or put the brakes on this program.’”
Leemon and Feinberg, from the law firm Piliero Mazza, said companies caught up in the suspension should consider sending an informal appeals to SBA to lift the suspension.
“If informal channels are unsuccessful, a suspended 8(a) company may — and should — appeal SBA’s decision within 45 days of the date of the Notice of Suspension to SBA’s Office of Hearings and Appeals. This process can be time consuming, and appeals decisions can be delayed for months or even years,” the lawyers wrote.
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What Role Do AI Secrets Play in Ensuring Cloud Security? Where digital threats loom larger than ever, how do organizations navigate complex cloud security? The answer lies in effectively managing AI secrets. This approach ensures that machine identities, an often overlooked aspect of cybersecurity, are adequately protected. Unveiling Non-Human Identities (NHIs) The cornerstone of modern […]
A widespread phishing campaign is targeting LinkedIn users by posting comments on users’ posts, BleepingComputer reports.
Threat actors are using bots to post the comments, which impersonate LinkedIn itself and inform the user that their account has been restricted due to policy violations. The comments contain links to supposedly allow the user to appeal the restriction.
Terry Gerton The IRS Criminal Investigations Division just published your 2025 annual report, and there’s some really interesting statistics in here, including $10.6 billion in identified financial crimes. And that’s a big leap up from the 2024 numbers. What do you think is going on? What factors contributed to that increase?
Justin Campbell Well, IRS criminal investigation has approximately 3,000 employees. We hover around that number annually. The key difference this year that we’ve noticed is we brought in a large number of new special agents. So we brought, we graduated 14 different classes this year through our academy. That means those are agents that are hitting the field and opening up new cases and detecting fraud. That has a large impact on our measurables, such as fraud identified. I think that’s a big piece of it. The other piece of is there’s a lot of fraud out there and we are the best in the world at identifying it. And the folks we’re hiring are coming to us from all kinds of backgrounds, well suited for this kind of work in the finance field and legal field. And so when our agents do hit the ground from training, they are well equipped from their prior background as well as their training we give them at the academy to quickly identify that fraud.
Terry Gerton You mentioned a lot of fraud. One of the other numbers that jumps out at me is the seizure of 2.3 petabytes of digital data. So not only is fraud happening, but it sounds like a lot it is happening digitally. In addition to the extra agents, are there new tools that you’ve used or new methods that you have of detecting that fraud and indicting it?
Justin Campbell Well, what we’re learning is all law enforcement agencies are dealing with is, more and more, our society is becoming paperless. And so even on what we would consider more traditional fraud cases, more data is being pulled digitally as opposed to from filing cabinets. When I was an agent, we would plan to seize filing cabinets full of records. And nowadays, professionals, business professionals, third-party money launderers in some cases, others that are committing criminal violations, are really good at scanning evidence, right? And a lot of us do that, a lot of legitimate people do that. I do that in my own personal life. I try to keep as much digital records as possible. What the challenge that presents for us though is, as you saw, we have petabytes of data we seize now. And so when we do these enforcement operations, we do search warrants or search subpoenas for records. A lot of times they are digital in nature. One thing we’re doing is trying to lean into artificial intelligence, large language models to help us more quickly identify fraud and to be more efficient with it. One example of that is we modeled a program this year called our case viability model. And essentially what it does is it looks across the data from our case management system for the past decade plus and says, hey, what is the likelihood success on this case. And it uses large language model technology to give the decision makers some view into the likelihood of success on a given case based on the inputs. So yeah, we are using data or technology, I should say to our advantage. And we are also grappling with the increased use of digitized data by taxpayers on our investigations.
Terry Gerton In addition to your annual report, you’ve also just released your top 10 cases list. It’s the season for top 10 lists. But I was struck in relation to what you just described by a statement that says financial trails are the criminal’s downfall relating to your data comment there. When you think of the top 10 lists, are there one or two that really caught your attention?
Justin Campbell Yeah, there’s two of them in particular that really highlight our skill set. I’ll start with one that’s in the news right now, the Feeding Our Future Investigation based out of Minneapolis. That’s over $250 million in fraud. Our agents have been at the table since day one, along with the FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service identifying that fraud. We are very proud of the work that our agents have done on that case. It’s been going on for a number of years now, and it really highlights where our agents can impact program fraud in particular. Another case that I think really speaks to something that only CI can do effectively is large investigations involving financial institutions. This past year, TD Bank was subject to a $670 million investigation related to failure to maintain the anti-money laundering program, and they pleaded guilty, or agreed, I should say, to pay a record-breaking $1.8 billion in penalties associated with that case. That’s a very large, complex case that I think speaks to the work that CI can do. And then the last point I’ll make, a case that really gets my attention in the role I’m in now, and it should catch the attention of taxpayers because these types of cases compound and this is an unscrupulous return preparer. We had an individual by the name of Rafael Alvarez in the Bronx, New York, submitted false tax returns on behalf of his clients to the tune of $145 million in fraud. And that particular case was sentenced this year. Mr. Alvarez was sentenced to prison and he helped his company generate approximately $12 million in fraudulent proceeds over the duration of the fraud. So, you know, those kinds of cases really do have a big impact on taxpayers because that comes out of the treasury, it comes out of the taxes that they paid in, and it really gets our attention.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Justin Campbell. He’s the acting deputy chief of IRS Criminal Investigations. Well, speaking of tax fraud, I mean, this administration has made the uncovering of waste, fraud, and abuse one of its key tentpoles in policy and programs. Your report says you identified $4.5 billion in tax fraud in 2025. Are there trends that are driving that increase?
Justin Campbell I wouldn’t say a trend that we have detected that, we would say has caused an uptick in fraud. Look, fraud’s there. It’s always going to be there. As much as many of us are frustrated by that, we are very accustomed to it at the IRS. As I stated earlier, I think the uptick in-part is related to the number of agents that hit the ground running in fiscal year ’25. That enables us to identify fraud quicker. And I think there’s also the fact that the agents that we are hiring are really sophisticated. I’ve been really impressed with their backgrounds when they start. So we aren’t training someone with no background in finance, for example, or law. These are very sophisticated individuals that come on board with us. So I would attribute the uptick primarily to the agents onboarding in fiscal year ’25. I couldn’t necessarily point to a specific trend. Now, we all know that we’re seeing a lot of program fraud reference in the news. There’s been a number of program of fraud cases brought related to COVID, different COVID programs. That could be driving some of that up, but we haven’t necessarily detected what we would point to as a specific trend on a specific type of fraud.
Terry Gerton That helps clarify the background here. I want to shift gears just a little bit because your annual report also talks about some new partnerships initiatives that IRS Criminal Investigations is undertaking, both with global partners and with financial institutions. Can you tell us a little about how those partnerships work and how they impact the findings that your agents make.
Justin Campbell Yeah, one of the partnerships that we’re really proud of is, we call it CI First, and it’s a program with banks where we work closely with them to provide them feedback on their regulatory responsibility to report certain types of transactions. And we have found over the years and working with our partners at the financial institutions that they are seeking feedback. They want to comply with the law, but they also want to know how well they’re doing in certain areas. And so we have a specific effort called CI First that provides feedback to them to ensure that they’re getting the feedback they need, and it ensures we get a high quality product from the banks as a result of their contributions.
Terry Gerton And how does that help amplify your reach, your enforcement reach?
Justin Campbell When we get strong relationships with financial institutions, we get great results. I’ll give you an example. So as an agent, I had personal relationships with certain bankers after years of conducting financial investigations. And they knew I was an IRS special agent. And so when someone walks into their bank and one of their lobbies and says, hey, I have a six-figure treasury check, I want to cash, their spide-y senses went up, right? And they called me directly and said, hey, this doesn’t seem right. Can you look into this? We’re filing an SAR on this. This doesn’t seem right, so anyway, that’s the kind of example I think that I would point to, strong relationships result in better cooperation from the banks.
Terry Gerton You’ve described a pretty busy environment with your agents and the level of fraud. As you look towards 2026, are there any particular trends or areas that are on your radar for enforcement?
Justin Campbell Well, we want to focus heavily on tax gap efforts. What I mean by tax gap is at the IRS, we know that there’s a certain amount of taxes owed as opposed to what is actually paid. And so that difference is what we call the tax gap. And some percentage of that is criminal in nature. We of course would never investigate someone for an unintentional failure to report income, but when there’s intentional failure to report income and intentional filing of a fraudulent return, that’s when an IRS criminal investigation is absolutely going to get involved. And so one of our big efforts this year is to look at where we can impact the tax gap more effectively. We are looking at high income non-filing, particularly. We would really want to focus in on that, as well as a few other case program areas, I should say that we have noted in the past, require constant policing. Employment tax fraud is another great example of an area that is subject to fraud based on our experience and we’ll continue our efforts this year in policing employment tax fraud.
DataDome Bot Protect supports Web Bot Auth, enabling cryptographic verification of AI agents to eliminate fraud risk while maintaining business continuity.
For those of you who are like me, when I first heard about the new EU AI Act, I had flashbacks to the implementation of the General Data Protection Act (GDPR) back in 2018. There are certainly a lot of similarities with the EU leading the way in consumer protections that will likely lead to more, similar legislation across the globe.
Many new teachers step into classrooms that still reflect traditional, teacher-centered models. These classrooms often place the teacher at the front, the curriculum at the center, and students in the role of listeners. Today’s learners live, think, and communicate differently, so they need more than memorization and recall. They need learning environments that value curiosity, ...
ZEST Security introduces AI Sweeper Agents that identify which vulnerabilities are truly exploitable, helping security teams cut patch backlogs and focus on real risk.
If you don’t understand a token’s economics, you are the exit liquidity.
Every bull cycle creates innovation. Every bull cycle also creates perfect conditions for rug pulls.
From meme coins that vanish overnight to “next-gen DeFi protocols” that drain liquidity in minutes, most crypto scams don’t fail because of bad marketing or weak hype — they succeed because investors ignore tokenomics.
Tokenomics is where truth lives.
You can fake roadmaps. You can fake partnerships.
But you cannot fake economic incentives forever.
This article breaks down the 7 most dangerous tokenomics red flags that consistently signal a rug pull — often weeks or months before it happens.
If you learn to spot these early, you stop chasing pumps — and start protecting capital.
What Is Tokenomics (And Why Rug Pulls Depend on It)?
Tokenomics refers to how a crypto token is designed, distributed, incentivized, and controlled.
At its core, tokenomics answers five critical questions:
Who gets the tokens?
When do they get them?
What can they do with them?
What happens when they sell?
Who controls future supply?
Rug pulls exploit imbalances in these answers.
Most investors focus on:
Price charts
Influencers
Narratives
Social media hype
But rug pull architects focus on token supply mechanics, because that’s where they extract value.
Before You Buy Another Token — Read This
Most rug pulls are visible in the tokenomics long before price collapses. If you’re serious about protecting capital in crypto, this guide will change how you evaluate every project going forward.
Clap now so you can easily come back to this checklist later.
The biggest tokenomics red flags signaling a rug pull include concentrated token ownership, unlocked team allocations, manipulable liquidity pools, unlimited minting rights, unsustainable yield emissions, unclear utility, and governance controlled by insiders.
Now let’s break each one down — with real-world logic and investor psychology behind them:
Red Flag #1: Concentrated Token Ownership (Whale-Controlled Supply)
Why This Is the #1 Rug Pull Indicator
If a small number of wallets control a large percentage of supply, price is an illusion.
A common rug pull structure looks like this:
Public thinks supply is “decentralized”
Reality: top 5 wallets hold 40–80%
Liquidity is thin
One coordinated sell = collapse
Danger Thresholds to Watch
Top 10 wallets hold more than 50%
One wallet holds over 10–15%
Team wallets disguised as “community” wallets
How Rug Pulls Use This
Scammers:
Slowly hype the token
Encourage retail buying
Let price climb organically
Dump in phases to avoid instant detection
Retail sees:
“Healthy pullbacks”
Reality:
Controlled distribution unloading
How to Protect Yourself
Check token holder distribution on Etherscan / Solscan
Identify wallet labels
Look for vesting vs liquid balances
If whales can exit before you can react, it’s not investing — it’s a trap.
Red Flag #2: Team Tokens That Are Unlocked or Poorly Vested
Why Vesting Is Non-Negotiable
Legitimate projects align incentives over years, not weeks.
Rug pulls align incentives until liquidity is deep enough.
Common Scam Patterns
“Team tokens are locked” (but no proof)
Vesting schedules buried in docs
Tokens technically “locked” but unlockable by multisig
Cliff unlocks at 30–90 days
Typical Rug Timeline
Token launches
Marketing push begins
Price appreciates
Team tokens unlock
Liquidity drains
Social channels go silent
Best-Practice Vesting (Green Flags)
12–24 month vesting
Transparent smart contracts
Public unlock dashboards
No early cliffs
If founders can exit before product-market fit, they will.
Red Flag #3: Liquidity That Can Be Removed or Manipulated
Liquidity Is the Exit Door
Liquidity determines:
How easily you can sell
How much price moves when you do
Rug pulls revolve around liquidity control.
Major Liquidity Red Flags
Liquidity not locked
Liquidity locked for <6 months
Liquidity controlled by deployer wallet
Multiple liquidity pools with uneven depth
Classic Liquidity Rug
Project launches on DEX
Liquidity attracts buyers
Price rises
Liquidity is removed
Token becomes unsellable
Price may still display — but there’s no exit.
How to Check
Verify LP tokens are burned or time-locked
Check locker contracts (Team Finance, Unicrypt)
Confirm who controls LP ownership
No locked liquidity = no real market.
Red Flag #4: Unlimited Minting or Hidden Supply Expansion
The Silent Killer of Token Value
If supply can be increased at will, your ownership is temporary.
Many rug pulls don’t crash price immediately — they inflate supply until price dies slowly.
Dangerous Contract Clauses
Owner-only mint functions
“Upgradeable” token contracts
Governance proposals controlled by insiders
Emergency mint permissions
Why This Works on Retail
Retail focuses on:
Market cap
Token price
Scammers focus on:
Future supply control
By the time inflation hits:
Liquidity is gone
Interest is gone
Community is fragmented
Safe Token Design
Fixed max supply
Immutable contracts
Minting disabled or burned
Transparent governance thresholds
If supply is elastic and centralized, so is risk.
Red Flag #5: Unsustainable Yield Emissions (Ponzinomics)
High APY Is Not Passive Income
If yields are paid only in newly printed tokens, value transfer is happening — from late buyers to early sellers.
Common Ponzinomics Signals
Triple or quadruple-digit APYs
Rewards disconnected from revenue
Emissions with no demand sink
“Temporary” high yields that never end
How Rug Pulls Use Yield
Inflate TVL
Attract mercenary capital
Create artificial legitimacy
Dump rewards into liquidity
Key Question to Ask
Where does yield come from?
Healthy answers:
Trading fees
Real protocol revenue
External demand
Unhealthy answer:
“Token emissions”
If yield requires new buyers to sustain it, collapse is guaranteed.
High APY ≠ Passive Income
If yield comes from token emissions, someone is paying the price — and it’s usually late buyers.
Bookmark this article and use it as a pre-buy checklist before touching any new token.
One saved decision can protect years of gains.
Red Flag #6: No Clear Token Utility Beyond Speculation
Tokens Need Demand Drivers
A token without real utility has only one buyer motivation: price appreciation.
That’s fragile.
Weak Utility Red Flags
“Governance” with no real power
Utility promised in the future
Token not required for core protocol actions
Value accrual unclear or nonexistent
Rug Pull Strategy Here
Promise future integrations
Delay real use cases
Let speculation drive price
Exit before utility is needed
Strong Utility Looks Like
Fees paid in token
Staking tied to revenue
Access control
Supply sinks (burns, locks)
Speculation fades. Utility compounds.
Red Flag #7: Governance Controlled by Insiders
Decentralization Theater
Many rug pulls advertise “DAO governance” while maintaining full control behind the scenes.
Governance Red Flags
Team controls majority of votes
Multisig controlled by insiders
Proposals pass instantly
No quorum requirements
Why This Matters
Governance can be used to:
Change token supply
Unlock liquidity
Redirect treasury funds
Modify emission schedules
All legally on-chain, but economically devastating.
Healthy Governance Signals
Distributed voting power
Time delays on execution
Transparent proposal history
Community veto mechanisms
If governance isn’t real, decentralization is marketing.
Why Smart Investors Lose to Tokenomics Traps
Even experienced investors fall for rug pulls because:
Bull markets reward speed over diligence
Social proof overrides analysis
Early profits create false confidence
Tokenomics feels “boring” until it matters
But the truth is simple:
Price tells you what happened. Tokenomics tells you what will happen.
Tokenomics Rug Pull Checklist (Save This)
Before buying any token, ask:
Who controls supply?
Are team tokens vested?
Is liquidity locked?
Can supply increase?
Is yield sustainable?
Does the token have real utility?
Who controls governance?
If two or more answers are unclear, walk away.
Conclusion: Rug Pulls Are Designed, Not Accidental
Most rug pulls are not chaotic failures. They are financially engineered exits.
Tokenomics is the blueprint.
If you learn to read it, you stop chasing hype — and start preserving capital.
In crypto, survival is alpha.
If this article helped you:
Clap to help others avoid scams
Share it with someone new to crypto
Follow for deep-dive crypto risk analysis
Because in the next bull market, the biggest returns won’t come from buying faster — but from avoiding traps earlier.
Terry Gerton A couple of months ago, we covered your first report in this disaster assistance high-risk series where you looked at the federal response workforce. You’re back with report number two, looking at state and local response capabilities. Talk to us about the headlines.
Chris Currie The headline for this report is that the capabilities of state and local governments across the country vary drastically for a disaster or other type of event. You know, what we did is we actually look at data that the states prepare and provide to FEMA as part of their justification for federal preparedness grants. It’s meant to be a very, very honest self-assessment of capabilities. And for that reason, we actually don’t provide states individually, we sort of roll it up and wrap it up anonymously because some of that information, as you imagine, could be sensitive. We looked at states that have been involved in major disasters over the last two to three years, and some of these states are very experienced, large states, and even they vary in terms of their capabilities. There’s actually 32 capabilities that FEMA sets in the National Preparedness System that you want to achieve to be prepared to respond for a disaster or a large event. And states vary. Some of the areas, they were less than 10% prepared — met less than 10% of those capabilities — and others, they were much more. So the reason that’s important right now is to understand that if you were to change the support that FEMA and the federal government provide to states quickly, then they’re going to have capability gaps that are going to have to get filled.
Terry Gerton Let’s talk about some of the support that FEMA does provide. One of the ways that they support the states is through preparedness grants, and those help build local capacity. What did you find as you dug into the preparedness grants?
Chris Currie Those preparedness grants started after 9/11, and since 9/11, there’s been over $60 billion provided to states. It’s the main way that the federal government transfers funds to state and local governments to get them ready to handle something bad that could happen, not just a natural disaster, but it could be a terrorist attack. And those grants have built capabilities tremendously over the years. But those capabilities change over time, and we identify through real-world events and exercises the gaps that still need to be addressed. So I’ll give you a great example. After Hurricane Helene and after other disasters, housing for disaster survivors is always a perennial challenge. Housing is a capability area that is assessed and we want to build up through these preparedness grants. It’s an area that states, even very experienced disaster states, still fall short of in terms of their capabilities. And the federal government kind of comes in after a disaster and provides a lot of that support because states don’t. So if the federal governments not going to provide it, then someone else is going to have to provide it. And that’s going to be someone at the state or local level.
Terry Gerton Talk to me about the flexibility and the allocation framework for these grants. Is it meeting requirements? Does it seem to be focused on the places that have the greatest need?
Chris Currie There’s a couple different ways they’re given out. There’s a portion of the grants that are supposed to go towards certain national priorities, and FEMA sets those targets. So think about things like election security or other national priorities. But then a large part of the grant, they’re discretionary, and the states can use them and they’re supposed to use them in the areas where they assess they have gaps. And that’s the data I was talking about earlier that we provided. For example, certain states may have gaps in their ability to handle a mass casualty situation or may struggle to house disaster survivors because they don’t have a lot of housing stock or rental. So those are things they’re supposed to identify and then target those grants towards those specific areas, which makes sense. You want to close your gaps so you’re ready to go when something happens.
Terry Gerton FEMA also provides a great deal of training and technical assistance. How effective has that been in helping states be ready?
Chris Currie This is, I think, one of the biggest success stories since Hurricane Katrina. If you remember Hurricane Katrina, the issue was the role of various levels of government was not clear, and thus, nobody stepped up and was proactive in responding to that event. And people lost their lives. Since that time, the National Preparedness System and FEMA leading that has been extremely effective through exercises, through training, through just regional relationships in taking care of a lot of those problems. So today we are way more proactive and responsive to disasters than we were 20 years ago in Hurricane Katrina. So that’s a huge success story. Having said that, a disaster is a disaster. There’s always going to be things that happen that you don’t expect. And there’s areas where states still have major gaps and require resources and people to address those. And the federal government comes in fills a lot of those gaps. Here’s a great example. Hurricane Helene happened and devastated a very remote part of our country in places like rural Tennessee and North Carolina and Virginia. States and localities don’t have the search and rescue assets for such a large swath of that kind of terrain. Federal government provided a lot of that. They provided a lot of the air support, the land support, the temporary bridges — Army Corps of Engineers. You know, the federal government really kicks in when something’s too big for a state or locality to handle.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Chris Currie. He’s director, Homeland Security and Justice at GAO. So Chris, all of this begs the question. This administration has been very clear that it wants states and localities to pick up more of the disaster response mission and that it wants a much smaller FEMA. Given what you found in your first study about the federal response workforce and the impacts of downsizing there, and now the variability in state and local readiness, what are the implications for national disaster response?
Chris Currie I want to make one thing really clear, because all I know is what we know now and the data that we’ve looked at. And I want it to be clear that nothing has changed in terms of FEMA’s responsibilities today. There’s been a lot of talk about it. There’s the president’s council that studied it. But there has been no change so far. So FEMA is still responsible for what it was responsible for two years ago. They have lost some staff. We looked at that in our first report, as you mentioned. They have lost about 1,000 staff, and maybe a little bit more than that, at this point, but they haven’t been cut drastically or cut in half as has been discussed. So they still have the same responsibilities and they’re still performing the same functions on disasters throughout the country, even though last year we didn’t have a huge land-falling hurricane. So what’s important about that is that everybody’s waiting to hear what the next steps are going to be and what’s going to happen to FEMA. One of the things we wanted to do in this report is we wanted to provide a comprehensive picture of preparedness to show what’s going to be necessary if that FEMA support is pulled back or FEMA is made smaller. And the bottom line is that states and localities are going to have to do more. However, it’s going to be critical that they have the time to prepare for that. For example, a lot of the assistance that’s provided to individual survivors, like cash payments and housing, that comes from the federal government. It does not come from the state or local government. So if FEMA is not going to be providing that, the state of the locality is going to have to fill that need. And that requires a lot of money and a lot preparation and planning that you can’t just turn on in a heartbeat. You don’t want to start figuring out programs to help people after a disaster happens.
Terry Gerton You bring up a good point on that time to prepare. As you did the survey, you talked to lots of state and local response officials. What did they tell you, beyond time to prepare, that they were going to need to be effective?
Chris Currie Very simple: Just tell us what we need to do. Tell us what were going to expect from you, the federal government. Nobody knows right now. The FEMA Council has not finished its work. There has been reform legislation introduced in the House and in the Senate, but nothing has passed yet. So the key message is, tell us what the roles and responsibilities are going to be so we know what to prepare for, so we don’t get caught flat-footed in the case of something really bad happening. One of my fears is that last year, like I said, we didn’t have a large land-falling hurricane. It was the first year in a long time we did not. We did not have a catastrophic disaster, other than Los Angeles fires early in the year. So my fear is that folks are going to look at last year and say, hey, things have gone pretty well. We don’t need to be thinking about it. And that is an absolute mistake. Because we’ve seen in years like 2017, 2018, 2024 — my fear is we’re going to have another situation this year or next with multiple concurrent disasters, and we’re just not going to the resources to deal with them.
Terry Gerton So what will you be watching for in the next few months to see if Congress and the federal government and the states have taken your recommendations on board?
Chris Currie Well, when the FEMA Council report comes out, I would like to see, in whatever the execution is for FEMA reform or the changes in how the system works now, an understanding of how this needs to be rolled out so states and localities can prepare and have as clear roles and responsibilities as possible. We’d also like to see them address many of the problems that we’ve pointed out. And to be clear, we’ve pointed out a number of issues with FEMA, particularly in the frustrating recovery phase. I want to see that they’re making sure that we don’t break what’s not broken and we fix the issues that are broken. And there are a number those things.
FEMA workers set up a new disaster recovery center in Manatee County, Florida, following Hurricane Milton. Survivors can meet with FEMA staff at centers to discuss their applications and available federal resources. (Photo credit: FEMA)
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