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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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White House App Order: Legal Risks for Feds
For federal employees, a government-issued phone is not personal space. It is federal property, controlled by agency IT rules, security policies, and ethics obligations. That is wh...
GAO, DOGE, and Federal Employee Data Rights
Federal employees have reason to pay close attention when the Government Accountability Office investigates access to agency databases. GAO is not a political commentator. It is Co...
VA Union Contract Restored: What Employees Should Know
For Department of Veterans Affairs employees represented by AFGE’s National VA Council, the First Circuit’s recent ruling is more than procedural news. A unanimous three-judge pane...
FEMA Readiness and Whistleblower Rights
Hurricane season begins June 1, and the anxiety inside FEMA is not abstract. According to a May 2026 letter from Representatives Bennie Thompson and Tim Kennedy, FEMA has lost more...
Federal FMLA Rights: What Feds Should Know
Most federal employees do not think about the Family and Medical Leave Act until a serious medical issue suddenly makes work impossible. By then, stress, fear, and paperwork can ma...
DoD Buyouts and Forced Reassignments
The Department of Defense’s deferred resignation program was sold as a path toward government efficiency. But according to the facts described in the transcript, DoD lost 61,600 ci...
Federal Pay Raise vs. Inflation in 2026
For many federal employees, the pressure is no longer theoretical. The 2026 federal pay adjustment authorized a 1.0% across-the-board increase, with locality percentages remaining ...
FMLA for Federal Employee Burnout
A federal employee recently asked the question many workers quietly carry: “If I take FMLA for burnout, will it end my career?” The honest legal answer is no—not by itself. Needing...
Voluntary OPM Skills Survey: Know Your Rights
OPM’s Federal Workforce Competency Initiative survey has understandably unsettled many federal employees. According to the transcript, the survey was sent to roughly 550,000 employ...
OPM Health Data and Federal Employee Privacy
Federal employees have reason to feel uneasy right now. The identity-theft protection offered after the 2015 OPM breach is beginning to expire, ten years after enrollment, even tho...
FEMA Restructuring and Federal Employee Rights
The FEMA Review Council’s final report uses unusually stark language: it recommends that the government “close the chapter” on FEMA as federal employees know it. For career civil s...
Federal Employee DOGE Email Responses Show Dignity and Professionalism
Many federal employees remember the February 2025 “what did you do last week” email not as a routine workplace request, but as a moment of shock. According to the transcript, feder...
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