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

OPM's New Suitability Rule Lets Agencies Bar Federal Employees for Up to Three Years

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Starting July 30, 2026, federal agencies will have a new way to remove employees already on the job — one built for screening applicants, not managing an existing workforce. The Of...

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TSA Travel Waste and Whistleblower Rights

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Federal employees are often the first to see the gap between what leadership says and what agencies actually do. According to the transcript, TSA cut roughly 3,000 workers in the n...

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NIH Whistleblowers and Retaliation Rights

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One year after hundreds of NIH scientists signed the Bethesda Declaration, their follow-up warning is stark: what they described as “chaos” in 2025 has become, in their words, “coo...

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Schedule Policy/Career and Whistleblower Rights

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For federal employees moved into Schedule Policy/Career, the most important question is not simply whether protections still exist. It is whether those protections can be meaningfu...

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When “Gross” Becomes a Legal Issue

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Rats running across employees’ feet. Bed bugs returning after fumigation. Coworkers climbing onto desks to avoid the floor. These are not merely unpleasant workplace stories. For f...

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DOGE Whistleblower Retaliation and Federal Rights

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Dan Berulis, an IT staffer at the National Labor Relations Board, reportedly raised serious concerns that DOGE had accessed agency systems and moved sensitive data out. The agency ...

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FEMA Readiness and Whistleblower Rights

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Hurricane season begins June 1, and the anxiety inside FEMA is not abstract. According to a May 2026 letter from Representatives Bennie Thompson and Tim Kennedy, FEMA has lost more...

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DOJ Bar Lawsuit and Federal Lawyer Ethics

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The Department of Justice’s new lawsuit challenging D.C. Bar disciplinary proceedings is not just a dispute between lawyers. For federal employees—especially agency counsel, invest...

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Political Pressure on Federal Case Settlements

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Federal employees depend on legal systems that are supposed to be neutral: the Merit Systems Protection Board, the EEO process, whistleblower protections, and related settlement me...

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USDA Relocations and Federal Employee Rights

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When a federal agency pushes out a researcher with 37 years of institutional knowledge, the loss is not abstract. It shows up in weakened programs, broken mentoring pipelines, dela...

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When Security Duties Become Career-Risk Moments

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Alexis Goldstein’s reported firing from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau raises a hard question for federal employees: what happens when the duty to safeguard government in...

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When Leadership Wants You Gone: NIH Lawsuit Raises Red Flags

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A newly filed federal lawsuit out of Maryland involving a senior NIH leader is sending a chill through the federal workforce—not because of who is involved, but because of what the...

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