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Civil Rights for Civil Servants
Hear Shaun Southworth and Lydia Taylor explain federal employee rights, public service, workplace systems, and the people navigating them.
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Before July 30: Three Things to Clean Up Under OPM’s New Suitability Rule
A new OPM suitability rule takes effect July 30, 2026, and it creates a second path for removing sitting federal employees that runs entirely outside the Chapter 75 adverse-action ...
The Federal Circuit Will Decide How Far “Article II Firings” Can Go
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has agreed to hear, en banc, a case that could decide how far federal agencies can go in removing career employees without the pro...
STEADY: The 90-Second Breathing Practice for Opening Your Inbox
Federal employees are carrying a heavier emotional load this year, and Southworth PC is launching STEADY, a new weekly mindfulness practice built for exactly that.
A New Monday Se...
Southworth PC Wants to Hear From You: Nominate a Guest for "Civil Rights for Civil Servants"
Federal employees have lived through an extraordinary eighteen months, and Southworth PC wants to help more of those stories be told firsthand rather than about the people who live...
The VA Rescinded Disabled Veterans' Telework — Then Called the Backlash "Absurd"
The Department of Veterans Affairs is rescinding telework accommodations for disabled veterans on its own payroll — and telling at least one employee that his 150-mile daily commut...
Is USDA's Reorganization a RIF in Disguise? What a New Court Filing Alleges
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says its reorganization "is not" a large-scale workforce reduction. A new court filing from federal employee unions argues USDA's own internal pl...
OPM Wants to Stop Measuring Federal Employee Morale. A New Survey Shows Why That Matters.
A new survey of federal employees who lost their jobs shows lasting damage to their finances and mental health, and it comes right as the Office of Personnel Management proposes cu...
Federal Discipline Without the Douglas Factors: What a New OPM-MSPB Rule Would Change
A new joint proposal from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) would retire the Douglas factors, the 45-year-old framework that ha...
OPM Wants to Cut the Survey Questions That Measure Federal Employee Morale
OPM has proposed rewriting the one survey that measures how federal employees actually feel about their jobs and their leadership. The proposed rule would decentralize the Federal ...
DOGE Is Dead. The Damage to the Federal Workforce Isn't.
DOGE — the Department of Government Efficiency — officially shut down on July 4, but the damage to the federal workforce it leaves behind is only now coming into focus. When Congre...
OPM's Proposed Rule: A 30-Day PIP Cap and Removal by Default
A newly proposed rule from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) could reshape how federal performance cases work — capping performance improvement periods at 30 days and making...
Douglas Factors Proposal and Federal Discipline
For more than forty years, federal employees have had a structured way to challenge discipline that feels excessive, inconsistent, or unsupported. That structure comes from the Dou...
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