The Federal Employee Survival Blog

Cut through the jargon and get the clarity you need to stay a step ahead of agency politics. Each article unpacks new policy shifts, court rulings, and workplace trends, then turns them into actionable tactics—so you can head off discipline, invoke EEO or whistleblower protections with confidence, and keep your documentation airtight. We also archive our most popular social-media explainer threads here, giving you the same insights followed by more than 150,000 people online even if you never scroll on those sites. Read, prepare, and keep your federal career firmly in your control.

 
Federal Shutdown: Furloughs Set to Expand as Carryover Funds Run Out federal employment law federal shutdown furlough rights mindfulness at work mspb appeals Oct 07, 2025

If you haven’t gotten a furlough notice yet, you might soon. Agencies that relied on leftover funding are exhausting it, and new rounds of furloughs are unfolding daily. More than 620,000 federal empl...

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Understanding Telework as Reasonable Accommodation federal employment mindfulness at work reasonable accommodation rehabilitation act telework rights Oct 07, 2025

For federal employees with medical conditions, few questions come up more often than this: Can telework be a reasonable accommodation? The answer is sometimes yes—but only when it allows you to perfor...

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Hatch Act Complaints Surge After Shutdown: Why Reporting Still Matters federal employment law federal shutdown mindfulness at work Oct 07, 2025

Within three days of the shutdown, nine separate Hatch Act complaints landed at the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC). The allegations are stunning: agency websites and official messages carrying p...

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AFGE Lawsuit Over Partisan Out-of-Office Messages: A First Amendment Test afge federal employment first amendment hatch act mindfulness at work Oct 07, 2025

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 “Senate Democrats.” T...

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Shutdown Update: What’s Really Happening — and When It Could End federal employee rights federal employment government shutdown mindfulness at work rif Oct 06, 2025

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 failed four times to...

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Partisan Out-of-Office Messages: Coerced Speech or Government Control? federal employment hatch act mindfulness at work political coercion whistleblower rights Oct 06, 2025

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 shutdown. Your name, your ...

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Watchdog Websites Go Dark: What Federal Employees Should Know cigie federal employment government oversight transparency whistleblower rights Oct 03, 2025

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 government shutdown. ...

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Partisan Auto-Replies and the Hatch Act federal employment government shutdown hatch act political activity workplace ethics Oct 03, 2025

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, they’d respond once...

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Supreme Court Case on Fed Independence and Your Wallet Oct 02, 2025

Yesterday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case challenging whether President Trump can remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. For now, the Court ruled that Cook remains in her position while a...

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Unions Challenge Shutdown RIFs: What Federal Employees Must Know federal employment government shutdown mspb appeals opm guidance rif Oct 02, 2025

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 agencies to use the gove...

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Judge Blocks Trump Order Stripping Federal Union Rights collective bargaining federal employment mindfulness at work mspb appeals union rights Oct 01, 2025

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 administration’s effort t...

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Federal Employee Guide to the 2025 Government Shutdown excepted employees federal employment federal shutdown furlough rights legal guidance Oct 01, 2025

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 approximately 1.57 millio...

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