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.

Your Agency's NDA Cannot Erase Your Whistleblower Rights federal employees nda opm prohibited personnel practices whistleblower protection Jul 15, 2026

A nondisclosure agreement cannot be used to block a federal employee from reporting wrongdoing — that protection comes from statute, not from whatever a form says, and it holds regardless of what you ...

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Judge Orders DOJ to Restore Telework for Two Disabled EOIR Attorneys eeoc federal employees reasonable accommodation rehabilitation act telework Jul 15, 2026

A federal judge has ordered the Department of Justice to restore full-time telework accommodations for two attorney-advisors in DOJ's Executive Office for Immigration Review, finding that the agency's...

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GAO Clears DOGE at NLRB — But the Agency Deleted the Access Logs First doge federal employees federal records act nlrb whistleblower protection Jul 15, 2026

A new Government Accountability Office report on DOGE's activity at the National Labor Relations Board reads, at first glance, like an all-clear. But a footnote buried in that same report undercuts th...

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State Department Is Hiring for Jobs It Just Cut — Know Your RIF Rights federal employees mspb reemployment priority list rif state department Jul 14, 2026

A year after the State Department separated roughly 1,350 employees in a reduction in force (RIF), the department is recruiting again for many of the same roles — and laid-off employees say they haven...

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Arbitrator Orders Forest Service to Restore Telework for 20,000 Employees federal employees flra return to office telework union rights Jul 14, 2026

An arbitrator has ordered the U.S. Forest Service to restore telework and remote work agreements for close to 20,000 employees represented by the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) — not ...

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New OPM Rule Requires Family Eligibility Proof for FEHB Every Time federal benefits federal employees fehb open season opm Jul 14, 2026

A new Office of Personnel Management (OPM) rule now requires federal employees to prove a family member's eligibility every time that person is added to Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) or Pos...

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OPM Wants to Cut the Survey Questions That Measure Federal Employee Morale accountability federal employees federal workforce fevs opm rule Jul 09, 2026

OPM has proposed rewriting the one survey that measures how federal employees actually feel about their jobs and their leadership. The proposed rule would decentralize the Federal Employee Viewpoint S...

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DOGE Is Dead. The Damage to the Federal Workforce Isn't. civil service doge federal employees federal workforce reduction in force Jul 09, 2026

DOGE — the Department of Government Efficiency — officially shut down on July 4, but the damage to the federal workforce it leaves behind is only now coming into focus. When Congress asked the White H...

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OPM's Proposed Rule: A 30-Day PIP Cap and Removal by Default douglas factors federal employees mspb opm rule performance improvement plan Jul 09, 2026

A newly proposed rule from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) could reshape how federal performance cases work — capping performance improvement periods at 30 days and making removal the default...

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Federal Court Blocks FLRA From Stripping Career Staff of Union Election Authority civil service federal employees federal news flra union rights Jul 08, 2026

For once, the news out of the Federal Labor Relations Authority is good for federal employees and their unions.

Background: More Than 40 Years of Career Oversight

Since 1983, career professionals in...

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NTEU Sues Treasury and HHS Over Thousands of Stalled Accommodation Requests disability rights eeo complaints federal employees reasonable accommodation rehabilitation act Jul 08, 2026

Federal employees waiting on disability accommodation requests at the IRS, HHS, or CDC just got some backing. On Monday, the National Treasury Employees Union sued the Treasury Department and the Depa...

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OPM's Forced Distribution Rule: What It Means for Your Federal Performance Rating eeo discrimination federal employees opm policy performance ratings whistleblower Jul 08, 2026

Federal performance ratings are about to look very different. This week, the Office of Personnel Management finalized the biggest overhaul of federal employee performance ratings in decades, and the c...

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