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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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AFGE Lawsuit Over Partisan Out-of-Office Messages: A First Amendment Test
Federal employees at the Department of Education recently discovered something shocking: their out-of-office messages—intended to explain the shutdown—had been rewritten to blame “...
Shutdown Update: What’s Really Happening — and When It Could End
As October 2025 unfolds, the federal shutdown shows no signs of quick resolution. Beneath the headlines, this is less a funding glitch and more a contest of leverage. Congress has ...
Partisan Out-of-Office Messages: Coerced Speech or Government Control?
Imagine discovering that your out-of-office email—sent from your official government account—was changed without your consent to blame one political party for the government shutdo...
Watchdog Websites Go Dark: What Federal Employees Should Know
This week, at least fifteen federal watchdog websites—including Oversight.gov, home to more than 34,000 inspector general reports—went dark. These sites weren’t casualties of the g...
Government Shutdown Nears an End: What Federal Employees Should Watch
After weeks of uncertainty, there’s a cautious sense of hope. The latest political signals suggest that the government shutdown—now one of the most disruptive in recent memory—coul...
Partisan Auto-Replies and the Hatch Act
On day one of the recent government shutdown, employees at the Department of Education set standard out-of-office replies: neutral messages explaining that, due to a funding lapse,...
Unions Challenge Shutdown RIFs: What Federal Employees Must Know
Federal unions have filed a lawsuit against the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), challenging recent guidance that encouraged agen...
Judge Blocks Trump Order Stripping Federal Union Rights
On September 30, 2025, federal employees won an important reprieve. Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for D.C. issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump admin...
Federal Employee Guide to the 2025 Government Shutdown
The government officially shut down last night. Roughly 23% of the federal workforce—about 547,000 employees—are furloughed under the Trump administration’s plan. That leaves appro...
Partisan Pop-Up on HUD.gov Raises Legal Red Flags
Recently, visitors to HUD.gov—the official website of the Department of Housing and Urban Development—were met with a startling pop-up: “The Radical Left are going to shut down the...
RIFs Continue During Shutdown: What Federal Employees Must Know
When a government shutdown looms, many federal employees assume all personnel actions grind to a halt. But as of September 29, 2025, OPM has clarified: Reduction in Force (RIF) act...
Senate Report Flags DOGE Data Security Risks
A new Senate investigation alleges that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been operating outside federal law, exposing sensitive federal data to heightened risk. W...
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