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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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Pentagon Civilian Cuts and Readiness Risks
When the Department of Defense cuts civilian jobs, the impact is not limited to payroll. Civilian employees support medical readiness, logistics, acquisition, cybersecurity, instal...
Pentagon Civilian Cuts and Readiness Risks
When the Department of Defense cuts civilian jobs, the impact is not limited to payroll. Civilian employees support medical readiness, logistics, acquisition, cybersecurity, instal...
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...
Education OCR Layoffs and Civil Rights Backlog
For federal employees, few experiences are more destabilizing than being told your work is no longer needed—only to watch the agency later admit it needs that same work done. That ...
HHS RIF Hiring Questions for Federal Employees
For federal employees affected by last year’s HHS layoffs, the recent discussion about hiring 12,000 people raises a serious legal question: if the agency said positions were elimi...
RIF During a Congressional Freeze: What Federal Employees Need to Know
When Congress passes a continuing resolution (CR) that prohibits agencies from initiating, carrying out, implementing, or even noticing a reduction in force, most federal employees...
Shutdown RIFs: What the Court’s Order Means for Federal Employees
Roughly 4,000 layoff notices went out earlier in the government shutdown, but a recent federal court order has frozen most of them. The injunction—issued by a judge in San Francisc...
Shutdown Day 29: Court Blocks RIFs, Talks Resume, Key Deadlines Loom
The federal shutdown continues into its fourth week, but this past week brought a mix of progress, pressure, and one major legal win for federal employees. Here’s what matters most...
Interior RIFs May Defy Court Order: What Federal Employees Should Do
Credible reports suggest that the Department of the Interior may begin mass layoffs as soon as Monday—even though a federal court order temporarily prohibits all shutdown-related R...
Federal Judge Halts Shutdown-Based RIFs Nationwide
In a sweeping move late Thursday, Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) stopping the administration from carrying ou...
What to Do If You Receive a RIF Notice During the Shutdown
On October 10, 2025, the administration began issuing Reduction-in-Force (RIF) notices to roughly 4,200 federal employees—even as the government remained shut down. That move, unpr...
Trump’s Proposed OPM Rules Could Gut Federal Job Protections
Federal employees, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) just previewed regulations that would mark one of the most sweeping rollbacks of civil service protections in decades. T...
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