The proposal would expand the channels through which tenants can safely report their housing issues.
Michele Sandiford
- The Pentagon is seeking to expand protections for military families living in privatized housing who report unsafe or inadequate living conditions. In a legislative proposal sent to Congress earlier this month, the Defense Department called for allowing tenants to report housing issues not just to landlords or their chain of command, but also to Defense Department housing officials, inspectors general and members of Congress. Currently, tenants are not protected from retaliation by the landlord if they report housing problems to an inspector general or a member of Congress. The proposal would expand the channels through which tenants can safely report their housing issues. The Defense Department said the proposal would not require additional funding.
- A case that’s currently pending in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals may have major consequences for civil service protections. More organizations are calling for a full-bench hearing of a case involving the 2025 terminations of two former immigration judges at the Justice Department. Justice Connection, an advocacy organization for DOJ employees, is one of those groups urging an en banc hearing. The organization warns that an adverse decision in appeals court could lead to an erosion of civil service protections and allow for easier and potentially politically motivated firings of thousands of federal employees.
- The Justice Department is being overwhelmed by False Claims Act whistleblowers who are analyzing data to file qui tam claims. To address this increase in complaints, Justice’s new FOCUS initiative will prioritize False Claims Act filings from high quality data miners. These are companies or individuals who analyze publicly available government data for potential signals of fraud. Using the Fraud Oversight through Careful Use of Statistics or FOCUS initiative, DoJ will work with data miners who have demonstrated an investment in pre-filing diligence and commitment to analytical rigor, familiarity with program rules and legally sufficient allegations. Since 2024, 45% of all qui tam filings are from data miners, and DoJ has received more than 750 total False Claims Act filings so far this fiscal year.
- Agencies will now need approval if they want to use any other type of contract but firm fixed price. Agencies must now default to using firm fixed price contracts or justify why they are using other types of contracts, including cost reimbursement types, in writing. President Donald Trump’s new executive order, signed yesterday, requires the contracting officer to justify their decision to use other contract types to the agency head. The White House said agencies rely too often on cost-reimbursement type contracts that result in unpredictable costs, bloated overhead and weak performance incentives. The EO gives agencies 90 days to modify, restructure or renegotiate its 10 largest non-fixed-price contracts by dollar value and move to a fixed price and performance-based incentives approach.
- Federal employees and supervisors should keep an eye on their inboxes next week. The Office of Personnel Management will be sending out a survey to select feds, looking to gather information on the current qualifications across a range of federal positions. The survey is part of OPM’s larger goal to move toward skills-based hiring. OPM said it will use the survey results to help redesign job requirements and career development standards, and to create more consistency in skills across government.
- The Department of Veterans Affairs said it’s in hiring mode, but expects limited growth in its total workforce. VA Secretary Doug Collins said the department is actively recruiting hundreds of new hires at every one of its hospitals.
“Right now, we’re hiring every position that needs to be hired. There’s no hiring shortage, no hiring freeze of anybody. If they need the people, they can hire the people,” Collins said.
The VA shed about 30,000 positions from its workforce last year through attrition and saw its first-ever net decrease in staffing in recent years. The department in its fiscal 2027 budget request is looking to grow its workforce by about 6,000 employees, about a 1.5% increase from current staffing levels. - A government watchdog said the Pentagon needs to improve how it calculates cost-of-living allowances for service members. COLA is a taxable supplemental allowance intended to help offset the cost of goods and services for service members stationed in high-cost areas. To calculate COLA allowances each year, the Defense Department uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, location-specific surveys of service members’ shopping patterns and retail price data for commonly purchased goods. But the Government Accountability Office found the department’s survey methods have key flaws; DoD’s survey of service members’ shopping patterns, for example, does not capture some location-specific expenses and its survey for determining service members’ shopping patterns relies on sampling practices that may not accurately reflect how service members actually shop. DoD pushed back on recommendations to adopt random sampling, arguing that their current approach helps maximize participation among service members.
- The Agriculture Department is planning to move most employees working in food assistance programs to hubs across the country. The Food and Nutrition Service will move staff to cities including Dallas, Kansas City, Denver, Indianapolis and Raleigh. The agency includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which offers food assistance to more than 40 million low-income Americans. USDA saw a high rate of attrition when it relocated fewer employees under the first Trump administration. But the department said it expects more employees will agree to move this time around.
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