Sean Michael Newhouse, Government Executive -

Democrats will retake the House and Senate, several news outlets projected on Tuesday.

With control of Capitol Hill, Democrats are in a stronger position to push back on President Donald Trump’s federal workforce reforms that they’ve expressed opposition to, such as widespread cuts to agency headcounts and budgets, removing civil service protections from roughly 8,000 federal positions through the Schedule Policy/Career job classification as well as perform oversight over matters like the former Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting initiative.

FEDweek - OPM has stressed to agencies the legal protections for federal supervisors and managers who take disciplinary actions against their subordinates and for federal employees who report issues with performance or conduct that can lead to such actions.

By Jory Heckman, Government Executive

The IRS is telling employees that it needs top performers who care about doing their jobs well, even if the agency is unable to give all of them adequate recognition for their accomplishments.

Federal agencies are currently reviewing how many employees can receive above-average scores on their annual performance reviews, after the Trump administration put a cap on top marks across the federal workforce.

The Office of Personnel Management in September directed agencies to limit top scores – an “outstanding” score of five, and an “exceeds fully successful” score of four – to no more than 40% of their General Schedule employees during this year’s performance review cycle.

FEDweek - The Federal Managers Association has raised concerns about salary inversion—subordinates being paid more than their managers—at Navy shipyards, saying “This problem is significant, worsening, and increasingly affecting the Navy’s ability to retain and support its management workforce.”

Sean Michael Newhouse, Government Executive -

The Trump administration’s efforts to downsize and remake the federal workforce could be curtailed if Democrats win back a majority in the House and/or Senate during the midterm congressional elections on Nov. 3.

By Sean Michael Newhouse, Government Executive

he Trump administration’s reforms to the federal government cost the U.S. economy more than $165.6 billion, according to a new estimate from the Partnership for Public Service.

“This is an administration that has claimed that it is trying to reduce waste, and yet the choices that it has made have created phenomenally larger waste,” said Max Stier — the president and CEO of the good government group, which has been critical of the president’s overhauls to the government workforce — during a press call on April 9.

One of the largest individual sources of the costs is nearly $53.2 billion tied to disengaged civil servants. Researchers relied on a Gallup finding that disengaged employees cost their organizations about 34% of their salaries, along with the percentage of disengaged federal employees in a 2025 Partnership survey.

By Eric Katz, Government Executive

President Trump on Friday proposed a $2.2 trillion fiscal 2027 budget, an overall increase on current spending that would include cutting non-defense agencies by 10%, or by $73 billion.

The proposed reductions were far less severe than the 22% in non-defense spending that the White House suggested chopping in his fiscal 2026 blueprint after Congress largely ignored those suggestions, though most major agencies would still see their budgets reduced under the new submission.

By Erich Wagner, Government Executive

The Social Security Administration must restore many of its employees’ ability to work remotely, according to an independent arbitrator who ruled Wednesday that the agency violated and illegally repudiated its contract with the American Federation of Government Employees when it called most workers back to the office full-time last March.

In January 2025, shortly after President Trump’s return to office, he issued a presidential memorandum purporting to end telework for most federal workers. SSA officials initially stated that it intended to “fully comply” with that memo and said employees would “soon be working in the office five days a week (full-time) with very few exceptions.”

By Eric Katz and Erich Wagner, Government Executive

Federal supervisors are poised to soon face limitations on how many employees they can rate as above average in their annual performance reviews after the Trump administration on Monday proposed upending the process for evaluating civil servants.

The Office of Personnel Management’s proposed rule would implement the first major overhaul of the federal employee performance management system in decades. The Trump administration is aiming to correct for what it views as inflated ratings within the federal workforce.

By Erich Wagner, Government Executive

The Office of Personnel Management this week proposed two new sets of regulations that would grant itself the authority to adjudicate the appeals of some federal workers’ firings, wresting control from the Merit Systems Protection Board.

In proposed regulations published in the Federal Register Monday, OPM proposed taking over adjudication of suitability appeals, which refer to decisions on whether someone is appropriate for federal employment. Last year, President Trump signed an executive order instructing OPM to take over suitability decisions, which previously were handled by each individual agency.

By Erich Wagner, Government Executive

President Trump on Tuesday touted shedding nearly 300,000 employees from the federal payroll during his first year back in the White House as part of a rambling address to reporters largely devoted to defending his administration’s crackdown on immigrant communities and dissent and threatened expansionism.

The comments on the federal workforce came during a more than hour-long presentation at the start of a briefing with reporters aimed at highlighting the administration’s first-year accomplishments. Trump read prepared remarks noting that the federal payroll has fallen by 270,000 workers since his inauguration last January, though he quickly inflated that figure to “millions.” The Office of Personnel Management has estimated federal job losses to the tune of 317,000 during fiscal 2025.

By Erich Wagner, Government Executive

he Trump administration last week proposed new rules that would strip newly hired federal employees of their access to the Merit Systems Protection Board and further erode the grounds upon which they can challenge adverse personnel actions.

For the first year of federal employment, new hires to the government already generally enjoy fewer removal protections than their tenured counterparts. Despite that, agencies may only terminate a probationary employee over performance or conduct.

Last April, after multiple judges reverted the Trump administration’s efforts to purge probationary employees across government by the thousands, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at making it easier to remove them, adding agency needs and organizational goals to the list of reasons managers may cite in said firings.

By Eric Katz and Erich Wagner, Government Executive

Draft final regulations from the Office of Personnel Management will cite “accountability to the president” as grounds for stripping tens of thousands of federal employees of their civil service protections, according to excerpts reviewed by Government Executive.

First devised late in President Trump’s first term and reissued in January, Schedule F—now renamed Schedule Policy/Career—is a new job classification within the government’s excepted service for "policy-related" positions. Employees in positions targeted for conversion would become effectively at-will employees.

By Eric Katz, Government Executive

The federal government is set to reopen after being shut down for a record-setting 43 days after the House on Wednesday evening approved a bill to resume operations across agencies.

President Trump is expected to quickly sign the spending package into law, meaning agencies could open as soon as Thursday morning. Most agencies will be funded through January under the new stopgap continuing resolution, though the Veterans Affairs Department, Agriculture Department and legislative branch agencies will be funded through September.

By Ann Werts, FedSmith

Recently, an ad on Facebook (no doubt targeted at me because of my federal employee relationships) invited federal employees age 60 and older to attend a federal benefits training. Of course, these financial advisors are interested in older feds about to retire (hey, I was a financial advisor for 22 years before retiring and letting my licenses lapse – I get it).

In reality, by that point, there aren’t a lot of things employees nearing retirement can change about their employment that will have much of an impact (other than working to age 62). There’s a much greater opportunity to make a difference by reaching those who are farther from the retirement finish line where even small tweaks can matter.

This article is for those who are looking to maximize their benefits in a simple, easy-to-implement fashion. Let’s look at something manageable: your annual leave, something you’ll want to pay attention to no matter where you are in your federal career.

By Eric Katz, Government Executive

Federal agencies are suffering from too many layers of political leadership, according to a new report that found the current process overwhelms the White House, overburdens the Senate and ultimately leads to less oversight of the executive branch.

The agencies throughout government that maintain up to five layers of Senate-confirmed political appointees are dealing with redundancy, a lack of clarity within senior roles and longstanding vacancies, the Center for Presidential Transition within the Partnership for Public Service said.