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

GAO: FEMA Cut 4,500 Employees With No Workforce Plan — What That Means If Your Agency Is Downsizing

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FEMA lost roughly 4,500 employees in eighteen months without ever assessing what the agency actually needed, according to a new Government Accountability Office audit — and the age...

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OPM Removed the Bias Check on Federal Hiring Assessments: What Changed for Applicants

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Federal hiring assessments no longer have to clear the government's 48-year-old bias check before an agency uses one on you. In an interim final rule that took effect immediately, ...

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An Off-Duty LinkedIn Post and Immediate Administrative Leave: The Speech Rules Federal Employees Should Know

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Off-duty social media posts can cost federal employees more than they expect. A director at the General Services Administration posted his opinion about a federal hiring rule on hi...

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Forced Agency Relocations: What the Law Requires When You Cannot Move

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Forced agency relocations are reaching federal employees at six or more agencies this summer, and NPR’s review of public records and internal communications this week describes a r...

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Senate Passes Its Own Funding Bill 89-4: What Changed, and What Didn’t

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Federal employees tracking government shutdown risk got a new data point Monday: the Senate voted 89-4 to advance its own stopgap funding bill, and it does not match the one the Ho...

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Ninety Seconds Before the Rules Change Again: A Monday Practice

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Federal employees are starting another week with headlines saying the rules changed again — and for a lot of people the shoulders are already up at the ears before the first cup of...

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VA Union Contract and August 8: What the Master Agreement Actually Says

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The AFGE–VA master agreement reaches its three-year terminal date on August 8, 2026, and whether the contract ends that day comes down to a single paragraph that most coverage has ...

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Congress Required This DoD Office by Law. It Went From 40 People to 9.

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Federal employees have watched a familiar pattern repeat across agencies this year, and a Pentagon office offers one of the clearest examples yet: an office Congress required by st...

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Could Jackler v. DOJ Weaken Civil Service Rights?

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An agricultural commodity grader and a federal immigration judge may seem to have little in common. Yet a new congressional brief in Jackler v. Department of Justice argues that th...

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Return-to-Office Orders Are (Mostly) Legal — But Disability Accommodations Are a Different Story

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A recent Federal News Network survey found that most federal employees say returning to the office has made them less productive — but for most workers, a return-to-office (RTO) or...

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The MSPB Deleted "Independent" From Its Website. Here's What Actually Changed for Your Case.

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This week, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) quietly deleted the word "independent" from its website, its LinkedIn page, and even a job posting — and the change is raising ...

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OPM Cut a Third of Its Own Workforce — Here's What That Means for Your Benefits

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The agency that runs your retirement, your health insurance, and your federal HR records has cut its own staff by roughly a third since the end of 2024 — and a new government watch...

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