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Shaun Southworth leading a federal employment training session with members of the Southworth PC team
 

Who Is DOJ Hiring to Enforce Civil Rights? What a New York Times Investigation Found

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The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has lost more than 300 career employees since early 2025 and hired about 130 new lawyers, and a New York Times investigation into rou...

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GAO Report: NNSA Workforce Cuts Reduced Oversight of Nuclear Material Security

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The National Nuclear Security Administration lost more than 230 federal employees in five quarters, and one of its security offices lost about 40 percent of the staff who oversee n...

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HHS Telework Brief Cited a Case That Doesn't Exist, FLRA Says

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When HHS appealed an arbitrator's order to restore telework for its union employees, the agency's brief to the Federal Labor Relations Authority leaned on citations that, according...

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Report: State Department Asked Foreign Service Officers Up for Promotion Who They Voted For

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A Foreign Service promotion is supposed to turn on your record, not your ballot. According to a report published October 22, 2026 by The Washington Sun, citing six current and form...

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OPM Writes the "Fork in the Road" Paid-Leave Deal Into Federal Regulation: What Federal Employees Should Know

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OPM has written the "Fork in the Road" paid-leave deal into federal regulation. The final rule, published at 91 Fed. Reg. 65924 on October 19, 2026, takes effect November 18. If yo...

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HHS Loses Telework Appeal: FLRA Says a Return-to-Office Memo Can't Override Your Union Contract

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The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) has denied every exception HHS raised to an arbitration award that ordered the agency to rescind its return-to-office directive and rei...

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Calibration Panels and the 40 Percent Cap: What Federal Employees Should Ask For

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"Calibration panel" is a term many federal employees are hearing this fall, and one of those panels may be deciding your performance rating right now. Reporting from Government Exe...

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Can a Federal Employee Refuse an Illegal Order? What 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(9)(D) Protects

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Can a federal employee refuse an order to break the law without being punished for it? Under federal law, most career employees can, and a story in the Washington Post this week is...

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Federal Judge Rules OPM Violated the Privacy Act by Giving DOGE Access to Employee Records

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A federal court has ruled that OPM violated the Privacy Act when it gave DOGE agents broad access to the personal information of tens of millions of past, current, and aspiring fed...

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GAO Report Warns NOAA Satellite Cuts Could Leave a Weather Data Gap

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Experts told CNN this week that cuts to NOAA’s next generation of weather satellites set American forecasting back nearly a decade. The Government Accountability Office report behi...

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Student Loan Default Crackdown Reportedly Planned for After the Election: What Federal Employees Should Know

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If your federal student loan is in default, new reporting says the government is getting ready to restart collection, including garnishing wages and seizing tax refunds. Nothing ha...

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OPM Repeals the One-Year Time-in-Grade Wait: Merit or Favoritism?

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OPM has finalized the repeal of the federal time-in-grade rule, ending the one-year wait that General Schedule employees have faced before becoming eligible for a promotion. The re...

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