• Veterans Affairs will no longer perform abortions in emergency cases, in light of a new legal opinion from the Justice Department. The VA started providing abortions to veterans in certain life-threatening circumstances in fall 2022. This comes after the Supreme Court ruling on the Dobbs v. Jackson case. The department began the process of rolling back the policy this summer. That process is still making its way through the official rule-making process.
  (Trump-Vance administration bans abortion care and counseling for veterans - Democracy Forward)
• Another agency CIO is heading out the door. Jeff Seaton, the NASA chief information officer, is retiring after 32 years of federal service. Seaton is taking advantage of the ability to delay his retirement under the deferred resignation program. His last day is Dec. 27. Seaton has been NASA CIO for almost five years and previously worked in senior technology roles at headquarters and at NASA Langley Research Center. The space agency is hiring a replacement for Seaton. Its job announcement said the new CIO will be a career senior executive service member. Applications for the position are due by Jan. 9.
  (NASA to hire new career CIO - USAJobs.com)
• One nonprofit is continuing to press for investigations into potential Hatch Act violations during the government shutdown. In a new letter to the Office of Special Counsel, the legal organization Democracy Forward called on OSC to open Hatch Act investigations, pointing to multiple incidents of partisan messaging during October and November. The group specifically highlights how agencies posted messages to their websites that blamed the shutdown on Democrats. And in a separate letter to the Government Accountability Office, Democracy Forward also raised potential violations of the Antideficiency Act during the 43-day shutdown.
  (Hatch Act letters - Democracy Forward)
• The Missile Defense Agency has tapped more companies to support the Golden Dome initiative. The agency has made over a thousand awards under its Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense, or SHIELD, contract worth up to $151 billion. The new awards expand a pool of pre-approved vendors eligible to compete for future task orders, bringing the total number of qualifying offerors to more than 2,000 companies. The agency said it has now transitioned to the ordering phase and drafting solicitations.
  (MDA taps more companies for Golden Dome SHIELD contract - SAM.gov)
• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed all department heads to recognize "outstanding” Defense Department civilian employees with cash bonuses. A new memo authorizes Pentagon leaders to award the top 15% of civilian employees bonuses worth 15% to 25% of their basic pay, capped at $25,000. Hegseth directed department heads to issue the bonuses by Jan. 30. The memo to recognize top talent comes amid Hegseth’s broader push to shrink and reshape the Pentagon’s civilian workforce.
  (Hegseth authorizes cash bonuses of up to $25,000 for top civilian employees - Federal News Network)
• A top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is no longer reviewing requests for telework as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities. Supervisors have instructed staff to email their medical documentation directly to Lynda Chapman, the agency’s chief operating officer, to “bypass” the traditional reasonable accommodation system, and receive up to 30 days of telework as an interim accommodation. But CDC employees tell Federal News Network that Chapman no longer has access to their reasonable accommodation requests. Former CDC officials say many of the human resources staff trained to handle reasonable accommodation requests were targeted by layoffs earlier this year.
  (As HHS restricts telework, CDC asks employees to ‘bypass’ reasonable accommodation process - Federal News Network)
• House Democrats are pressing the Office of Personnel Management for answers on how the agency is addressing abnormally high volumes of federal retirement applications. In a letter sent this week, the lawmakers raised concerns about the delays retiring federal employees are currently experiencing. That’s after the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program spurred a major influx of retirement applications. The lawmakers are giving OPM Director Scott Kupor until the end of January to respond with more details on OPM’s plans.
  (House Democrats question OPM on retirement processing delays - Federal News Network)
• House Democrats are urging the Transportation Security Administration to preserve union rights for TSA airport screeners. Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and 11 of his colleagues say TSA’s push to end union rights will not improve efficiency or security at airport screening lines. In a new letter, lawmakers urge Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to keep TSA’s 2024 collective bargaining agreement in place. TSA plans to void the collective bargaining agreement effective Jan. 11. The American Federation of Government Employees is urging a federal judge to take action, pointing to a preliminary injunction that blocked TSA’s previous attempt to eliminate the union agreement.
  (House Dems urge TSA to preserve collective bargaining agreement - Federal News Network)
• The owner of a federal contractor is facing up to 90 years in prison after being indicted by a Baltimore grand jury in a scheme to defraud the government that included rigging bids for IT contracts and receiving kickbacks in exchange for influence over IT procurements. Victor Marquez is facing wire fraud charges. The Justice Department said Marquez and his co-conspirators used his access to sensitive procurement information to rig bids for procurements for large government IT contracts. Marquez allegedly received more than $3.8 million in compensation in the form of kickbacks for steering procurements to his co-conspirators, who referred to the payments to Marquez as the “Vic tax.”
  (Federal IT contractor facing charges of defrauding the government - Justice Department)

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