This report provides an update on issues affecting federal managers. As always, I encourage you to visit www.fedmanagers.org on a regular basis for more information on these and other matters.

Also, be sure to look for the monthly FMA Grassroots Update where we offer links to action letters and FMA-PAC matters we do not address in the Washington Report. The grassroots newsletter is sent exclusively to non-governmental email addresses to avoid any Hatch Act violations. If you are not receiving it, contact the national office to provide your non-governmental email address.

Please feel free to provide feedback any time by emailing Greg Stanford at gstanford@fedmanagers.org, or by calling the National Office at (703) 683-8700. Thank you for your membership in FMA. It’s an honor to represent your interests before Congress and the administration.

The House of Representatives passed the One Big Beautiful Act (H.R. 1) in the early morning hours of Thursday May 22, 2025, following a late night of debate. The bill, considered the centerpiece of President Trump’s legislative agenda, passed by a vote of 215-214. The bill extends significant tax cuts and provides hundreds of billions of dollars of increased spending on defense, border security and energy dominance. Cuts to federal employee retirement benefits were significantly tweaked prior to passage. The bill must be considered and passed by the Senate before it can be signed into law.

“As an organization of managers in the federal workforce, FMA supports the underlying goals of this legislation, including national security and other investments in our great country,” FMA National President Craig Carter wrote in a press release. “Our chief concerns lie predominantly with how to pay for it and earned benefits that will be cut if the bill is enacted.”

Carter expressed relief the House eliminated two of the more egregious provisions previously included in the bill cutting federal employees’ earned retirement benefits prior to the final vote. FMA successfully advocated for the removal of the provision to increase pension contributions for all Federal Employees' Retirement System (FERS) employees, and elimination of the proposed annuity calculation change from the High-3 to the High-5.

On April 17 President Trump extended the hiring freeze he implemented on January 20 for an additional three months to July 15, 2025. The hiring freeze prohibits filling vacant federal civilian positions or creating new ones. When the hiring freeze expires, agencies “will be able to hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart from federal service,” according to the presidential memorandum. It is part of a larger effort to “drain the swamp and end ineffective government programs.”

More recently, on May 29, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a memo titled “Merit Hiring Plan” that outlines a major overhaul in federal hiring policy. The plan was issued pursuant to Trump’s directive that “brings to the federal workforce only highly capable Americans dedicated to the furtherance of American ideals, values, and interests.”

President Trump’s reductions in force (RIFs) and large-scale agency reorganization effort remains on pause pending the outcome of litigation making its way through the legal system. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit continued the pause instituted by a lower court ruling. The legal battle will likely head to the Supreme Court for its ultimate resolution, as the Justice Department asked it to intervene.

The lawsuit stems from unions and other federal employee advocacy groups suing the Trump administration over its efforts to sharply downsize the federal workforce, including RIFs that have already been put in place. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argues the district court’s injunction on RIFs is "flawed" and rests on an "indefensible premise."

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) published a proposed rule earlier this week that would make it easier to terminate federal employees for serious misconduct. A public comment period is open through July 3, 2025.

OPM is proposing changes to federal employee “vetting adjudicative processes for determining suitability and taking suitability actions.” The purpose of this rule is: “to improve the efficiency, rigor and timeliness by which OPM and agencies vet individuals for risk to the integrity and efficiency of the service, and to make clear that individuals who engage in serious misconduct while employed in federal service are subject to the same suitability procedures and actions as applicants for employment.”

The rule would modify “suitability and fitness” standards, expanding these standards typically governing job applicants to apply to current federal employees, as well.

Pursuant to the Utilizing Space Efficiently and Improving Technologies (USE IT) Act and an April Memo from the Office of Management and Budget, the Trump Administration is working to track daily and annual federal office building occupancy.

The Trump Administration is committed to efficient use of taxpayer dollars, and will shrink the federal real estate footprint to eliminate unused and wasteful federal office space,” reads the memo. “This memorandum lays out standardized technologies, approaches, and methodologies for federal agencies' collecting and reporting occupancy and building use data in alignment” with the USE IT Act.

Agencies were required to begin utilization monitoring “at public buildings and federally leased space where the federal agency occupies space” no later than May 4, and have until July 4^th to fully implement their system.

Federal employees will see a pay freeze in 2026 based on President Trump’s initial budget request for Fiscal Year 2026, released in early May, and additional details included in a technical supplement released last week.

This is a blow for federal employees, who already earn nearly 25 percent less than their counterparts in the private sector, but it is not yet the end of the process. In August, President Trump will send his annual alternative pay plan letter to Congress, which could include a pay boost.

The uniformed military is slated to receive a 3.8 percent pay boost in 2026.

As we have previously reported, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is continuing to process payments as part of the implementation of the Social Security Fairness Act, legislation FMA helped pass to repeal both the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP).

As a result of the law, signed by former President Joe Biden in January 2025, the GPO-WEP repeal gives larger Social Security payments to more than three million civil servants, retirees, and spouses.

An SSA official noted providing these benefits restored by the Social Security Fairness Act is a “priority workload,” via exclusive reporting by Federal News Network. To date, the agency has provided more than $15 billion to more than 2.3 million people impacted by the provisions the bill eliminated.

On May 23, FMA National President Craig Carter submitted comments for the public record in opposition to the Office of Personnel Management proposed rule titled “Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service.” The proposed rule furthers President Trump’s effort to create a new classification of federal employees – Schedule Policy/Career – that would make an estimated 50,000 federal employees “at-will,” stripping them of existing due process rights.

FMA’s comments are among the more than 33,000 to be submitted so far.

Under the proposed rule, federal employees whose jobs are deemed as “policy-determining, policy-making, policy-advocating, or confidential duties” would be reclassified into Schedule Policy/Career, losing civil service protections. These employees will be “at-will,” stripped of adverse action procedures or appeals. In a fact sheet, the administration says, “this rule empowers federal agencies to swiftly remove employees in policy-influencing roles for poor performance, misconduct, corruption, or subversion of presidential directives.”