FedFam, Washington D.C., DC (2026)

08/21/2026

☀️ Good morning Fam!! August 21, 2026. 40 days until end of fiscal year.

The Office of Special Counsel is pursuing discipline against two federal employees over political candidacies, fundraising, and use of government resources. With midterms in November, this is the season people get themselves in trouble. Here is the refresher.

📍 The enforcement trend is real: In FY2025, OSC received 694 Hatch Act complaints and resolved 711, up sharply from 458 received the year before. It filed four complaints with the MSPB, up from one. It obtained 17 disciplinary actions. This is not a dusty statute nobody enforces.

📍 The rule that catches the most people, fundraising: You may never solicit, accept, or receive political contributions. Not on duty, not off duty, not at home, not ever. That includes hosting a fundraiser, inviting people to one, forwarding a donation link, and sharing or liking a fundraising post on social media. Attending a fundraiser is fine. Asking anyone for money is not.

📍 On duty means more than you think: No partisan political activity while you are working, and that includes while teleworking. It also covers any federal building, government email, government devices, and official video conferencing. One recent case involved an employee sending political messages on duty across dozens of days. The penalty was a 30 day unpaid suspension.

📍 Running for office: If you want to run for partisan political office, you generally have to resign your federal position first, and the prohibition reaches preliminary steps, not just the formal announcement. In a recent case a federal supervisor ran, won, and then resigned the elected seat once he was told it violated the Act. Nonpartisan races are treated differently, and there is a narrow exception for employees living in certain designated communities.

📍 Know which category you are in: Most employees are "less restricted," meaning you can be politically active on your own time, off duty, outside a federal facility, without government property. But career SES members, administrative law judges, and employees at agencies like the FBI, the Secret Service, the intelligence agencies, DOJ's Criminal and National Security Divisions, IRS Criminal Investigation, MSPB, and OSC itself are "further restricted" and cannot take an active part in political campaigns at all.

📍 What it can cost you: Removal from federal service, debarment from federal employment for up to five years, a civil penalty, or an unpaid suspension. And a Hatch Act finding follows your name.

📍 The free thing almost nobody uses: OSC will give you a written advisory opinion before you act. It issued 777 of them last year. Email [email protected] or call the hotline at 800-854-2824. If you are wondering whether that repost, that yard sign, that text thread, or that campaign volunteering crosses a line, ask first. It costs nothing and it is the whole ballgame if a complaint ever gets filed.

Enjoy the political season, Fam. Just do it on your own time, on your own device, and without asking anybody for a dollar.

💙

🔗 fedsmith.com/2026/08/20/osc-hatch-act-discipline-federal-employees/

08/20/2026

🌙 Good evening Fam. August 20, 2026. One Office, $156 Million.

We have covered the national estimates for what the deferred resignation program cost. Public Citizen put it at $11 billion. GAO said as much as $15 billion. Today, thanks to a FOIA request, we can see what it looked like inside a single office.

📍 The number: The Interior Department spent $156.5 million on administrative leave for employees in the Office of the Secretary alone, between the January 2025 inauguration and the end of that year. That breaks down to $113.4 million in pay and $43.1 million in benefits.

📍 What that bought: 1,764 employees in that office were on administrative leave at some point. Of those, 1,468 took the resignation program and left. Close to 1,500 people, most of them senior, were paid not to work for stretches ranging from days to months while they waited out their resignation dates.

📍 Who actually left: More than a thousand were GS-12 through GS-15. Many held titles like contract specialist, grants management specialist, and accountant. The median salary of a secretary's office employee who took the deal was $121,684. Departures included 125 people in Washington and 222 in Lakewood, Colorado, a major hub for Interior staff out West.

📍 And this is one slice: The records cover the secretary's office only. They do not include the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, or any other Interior bureau. Across the whole department, 6,374 employees took the resignation program. Interior did not answer a question about the departmentwide administrative leave cost.

📍 Interior's position, stated fairly: The press office said the effort aimed to "right-size the federal workforce, cut bureaucratic waste, and ensure taxpayer dollars are spent efficiently," adding that "by streamlining operations and reducing unnecessary positions, we are strengthening our ability to serve the public while making government more effective and accountable."

📍 The counterargument: Aaron Weiss of the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation watchdog group, called it a massive waste of taxpayer dollars. "That's money that should have been going to the people who manage America's parks and public lands. That's all the expertise that we're paying to sit at home and do nothing." He put the scale in local terms: roughly ten botched Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovations.

📍 The part with a deadline: Before this administration, agencies were discouraged from using paid leave for extended periods. In June, OPM proposed new regulations to allow extended administrative leave specifically to support workforce restructuring and realignment. That rule is slated for completion in November.

📍 What it means for the people still there: Those contract specialists, grants managers, and accountants did the work that keeps parks staffed, permits processed, and payments moving. Whatever anyone thinks about the spending, the workload did not leave with them. It landed on whoever stayed.

💙

🔗 eenews.net/articles/interior-paid-156-million-for-employees-not-to-work/

08/20/2026

☀️ Good morning Fam!! August 20, 2026. 41 days until end of fiscal year.

Yesterday we told you the forced rating distributions apply to the cycle closing next month. This morning, the man behind them is making his case in the Washington Post. Read it for what it says.

📍 The argument: "If 99.5 percent of federal workers are succeeding, why isn't government?" OPM Director Scott Kupor's core claim is that when almost nobody is rated below expectations, the rating stops meaning anything, and a system that cannot tell excellent from adequate cannot properly reward either one.

📍 The history he opens with: In 1881, Charles Guiteau shot President Garfield after being denied a job he believed he had earned by campaigning for him. Congress responded with the Pendleton Act in 1883, ending the spoils system and making merit the governing philosophy of the federal workforce.

📍 The line worth sitting with: Kupor writes that the Pendleton Act's animating principles, "that hiring be based on performance, not fealty, and that competent employees be protected from political interference," remain sound nearly 150 years later. That is the standard he is inviting people to hold his own reforms against.

📍 What OPM says it has done in 20 months: Self assessments are gone from job applications, replaced with tests or interviews. Job descriptions are being rewritten to strip out what he calls proxies for talent, including degree requirements. His framing is that merit matters, not how long you have been in a role or which college you attended.

📍 Where his case lands: Ratings inflation is real and documented, flagged by GAO and MSPB for years, with about 0.3 percent of employees rated below expectations. Plenty of people here have carried a coworker who was not carrying themselves and watched that person receive the same rating. Kupor has also said there is no shame in fully successful, since it means you are meeting every expectation of your job.

📍 Where critics push back: A forced distribution does not measure whether you met your standards. It measures where you landed relative to colleagues, sometimes colleagues doing entirely different work. Former OPM officials who agree inflation is a problem have argued the fix should not be arbitrary caps. And the practical stack matters, because you can no longer grieve a rating through the union process, and under the new RIF rules taking effect September 2, ratings outweigh seniority in deciding who stays.

📍 The test he set for himself: Competent employees protected from political interference. That is his sentence, not ours, and everything OPM does from here can be measured against it.

📍 What changes for you today: Nothing. Your FY26 rating closes next month, calibration panels will work from whatever is written down, and your self assessment is the only document in that room with your name on it. Get your accomplishments in writing this week.

Read the op-ed. Decide for yourself. Then go document your year.

💙

🔗 washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/20/opm-chief-how-trump-administration-evaluates-government-workers/

08/19/2026

🌙 Good evening Fam. August 19, 2026. Feds Helping Feds.

Forty two days out, this is the resource to know about before you need it. Most people in this community have never heard of it.

📍 FEEA: Federal Employee Education & Assistance Fund founded in 1986, modeled after the military relief societies. It is the only independent nonprofit devoted solely to civilian federal and postal employees and their families. Nearly forty years in, they have supported more than 60,000 families. You do not have to belong to a union to use it.

📍 Emergency hardship loans. No fee, no interest. You qualify if you are a full or part time permanent federal civilian or postal employee with more than a year of service, and you have had a qualifying hardship in the last six months: severe illness, injury, or dental emergency for you, severe illness or injury of an immediate family member, a death in the family, a house fire, or major damage to your home. More than 13,000 of these have gone out since 1986.

📍 How the money actually moves, because this surprises people. Approved loans are disbursed by check made out to your creditor and sent to you to deliver. FEEA does not write checks to employees directly, and does not pay student loans or credit card bills.

📍 Layoff loans. If you were laid off from federal service, including from probationary status, and your most recent federal salary was $80,000 or less, you may qualify for up to $2,000. Same structure, check to the creditor. Short term deferred repayment may be available. Seasonal and intermittent employees are not eligible.

📍 The part that matters most for our countdown, and read this carefully. Do not use the emergency hardship loan application if a furlough or shutdown is what caused your financial trouble. FEEA runs a separate program for that at feea.org/shutdown. Applying through the wrong door slows everything down at the exact moment speed matters. Bookmark that page now.

📍 What else they do. Disaster relief grants, more than 14,000 given since 1986 for hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and during the last long shutdown for groceries, fuel, and diapers. Merit based scholarships for a few hundred students a year, open to employees and their dependents. Free K-12 tutoring through a Tutor.com partnership for lower income federal families. And childcare subsidy administration through their services subsidiary.

📍 Two things to do tonight. Save feea.org and feea.org/shutdown somewhere you can find them fast. And if you are in a position to give rather than receive, they run on donations from federal employees, unions, and associations. Feds helping feds is not a slogan there. It is the funding model.

Nobody plans on needing this. That is exactly why you find out about it in August instead of October.

💙

🔗 federalnewsnetwork.com/fed-thread/2026/08/the-safety-net-you-didnt-know-you-had-feeas-lifeline-for-federal-workers/

08/19/2026

🥪 The Half Hour. August 19, 2026. 1,400 Officers, One Date.

Take your break, Fam. This one is narrow, but if it is you, it is worth a lot of money.

📍 The setup. In 2007, Congress gave Customs and Border Protection officers an enhanced retirement benefit similar to what law enforcement officers and firefighters get. It took effect July 6, 2008. Officers hired after that date earn 1.7 percent of their high-3 for 20 years of covered service, versus the standard 1 percent. They also generally cannot start after age 36 and must retire by 57.

📍 Officers already serving on that date got a proportional annuity, meaning 1.7 percent for years after July 6, 2008 and 1 percent for years before it, without needing a full 20 years of covered service.

📍 Here is the crack people fell into. About 1,400 officers received a tentative offer of employment before July 6, 2008, but did not actually enter duty until after it. CBP originally told them they would get the proportional annuity. In 2021, OPM decided otherwise, because they had not entered duty by the effective date.

📍 What that means for those 1,400. Either work until you complete a full 20 years of covered service, or retire with a smaller annuity than you were told you would get, with the standard 1 percent applied to every year you served.

📍 The fix. H.R. 8844 would treat everyone in that group as having been in their positions on the effective date, restoring the proportional annuity. It cleared the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in May and is pending a House vote.

📍 Why this one actually has a chance. The Senate passed a similar bill last year, H.R. 727. When both chambers have already shown they will move something, the odds go up considerably.

📍 If you are a CBPO who got an offer letter in early 2008 and started after July 6, this is your bill. Check your entry on duty date against your original tentative offer. And if you know somebody in that group, send them this, because plenty of them have been planning a retirement date around a number OPM took away in 2021.

Back to it, Fam. 💙

🔗 fedweek.com/fedweek/the-cbp-retirement-anomaly-what-it-is-what-the-pending-bill-would-do/

08/19/2026

☀️ Good morning Fam!! August 19, 2026. 42 days until end of fiscal year.

The forced rating distributions are not waiting for next year. OPM confirmed to FEDweek that they apply to the cycle closing next month.

📍 What OPM said. In response to questions from FEDweek, the agency said standardized rating "applies to both the FY26 and FY27 performance appraisal cycles." Agencies must establish a calibration program for the FY26 closeout no later than September 20, the end of the FY26 appraisal cycle. They must also design their new GS performance management systems and have them approved by OPM before October 1 for FY27. OPM says it will publish FY2026 close-out guidance separately, expected in the next few weeks.

📍 The pattern in OPM's manual. The manual for agency performance management officers does not set a required pattern, but gives as an example a target of 10 percent of employees rated Level 5, outstanding, and 20 percent at Level 4, exceeds fully successful, within possible ranges of 5 to 15 percent and 15 to 25 percent. Almost all of the rest would presumably land at Level 3, fully successful. That largely mirrors the policy already in place for senior career employees, whose combined limit at the top two levels is 30 percent.

📍 What it replaces. OPM has said that in 2024, nearly 43 percent of employees below senior levels on a five-level system received a Level 5 rating, another nearly 22 percent were rated Level 4, and all but a few percent of the rest were at Level 3. On four-level systems, 55 and 34 percent were rated in the top two levels.

📍 How the numbers get brought down. The patterns apply as an aggregate agency-wide, allowing for variation by component, occupation, geography, and other factors. Supervisors will not need to follow a pattern within their own work unit. But barring a substantial change in how supervisors assign ratings, the higher-level action will have to bring many of them down to meet the desired overall pattern.

📍 Who does that. Calibration panels made up of representatives from the performance management officer, executives, senior managers, HR, and other senior officials from multiple agency units. They are tasked with developing "defensible distinctions among high performers," focusing on what the employee accomplished, what effect those accomplishments had, how challenging the work was, whether performance was sustained, and how the employee contributed to mission success.

📍 The example from the manual. Eight employees in a unit have been rated Level 5, but only two such ratings are permitted for that unit. In choosing the two, the manual says considerations should be what evidence distinguishes the top performers, what accomplishments produced the greatest mission impact, whether achievements were sustained, and whether distinctions can be documented objectively.

📍 What that means for you right now. The people making that call will work from what is written down. If your accomplishments are not in your self assessment in specific terms tied to mission impact, the panel has nothing to distinguish you with. You have about a month before the cycle closes.

💙

🔗 fedweek.com/fedweek/forced-distributions-will-apply-to-current-ratings-cycle-says-opm/

08/18/2026

🌙 Good evening Fam. August 18, 2026. Sixteen Thousand Hires, No Net Gain.

New USDA documents filed in court show the department is planning to hire 16,000 people this year while expecting most of that hiring to change nothing. And one employee has until Thursday to decide her future.

📍 The hiring number that is not what it sounds like. USDA told the court it plans to hire nearly 16,000 employees in FY2026. Its own updated staffing plans say a majority of that hiring will "result in no net gain" and will instead "offset expected attrition." Some organizations, in USDA's words, "may end FY 2026 with reduced employee counts where attrition outpaces gains."

📍 What the department has already lost is more than 28,000 employees have separated since the start of the second Trump administration. After hiring, that is a net decrease of nearly 16,000.

📍 In February, USDA requested an extension of its Voluntary Early Retirement Authority as part of its reorganization plans and to "support USDA's efforts to Downsize the Federal Workforce." Their capitalization. The department told OPM it expected another 5,000 to take the offer, and that if it fell short, it would shrink through relocations, reassignments, and downgrades instead. Meanwhile USDA has told employees receiving relocation notices that it is a "myth" the reorganization is a way to shrink the workforce.

📍 Justice Department attorneys told the court the "reorganization plans include workforce optimization measures, including downsizing," while arguing that "relocating employees, even if some voluntarily resign instead, is not the same as implementing large-scale RIFs." They also acknowledged USDA has not conducted any attrition analysis yet, and said the best available information suggests attrition will be lower than in prior reorganizations because of the job market.

📍 In an internal survey of more than 150 Foreign Agricultural Service bargaining unit employees, 94% said they would quit rather than relocate to Kansas City. AFSCME local president Collin Bradley told the court he is certain there will be significant attrition, and that the union already shared those results with the agency.

📍 NIFA has started having employees document the steps required to run particular grant programs, a system AFGE local vice president Tom Bewick says exists because the agency expects a mass exodus. His point about what is being lost: it takes a new hire about three or four years to learn to run a grant program independently, and "many of the employees hired in 2020 to address the attrition from forced relocations in 2019 are just beginning to hit their stride."

📍 One NRCS employee with decades of experience got a notice of intent on August 5 reassigning her more than 1,200 miles away. She has no description of the new position's duties. She has worked remotely for years under a reasonable accommodation that was recently reapproved. When she raised it, an HR official replied that she would need to accept the position and report to the new duty location before the agency could move forward with the accommodation process for that location.

📍 Her words: "I don't know anything about the job. I don't know if it violates my rights. I have several disabilities. My husband is my caregiver, and my doctors already work with me." Her deadline to accept, decline, or apply for retirement is Thursday, August 20.

📍 If you are holding a notice right now. Get every unanswered question in writing. Submit your accommodation or hardship request on the record regardless of what you are told about sequence, and keep a copy. Talk to your union before your deadline. And know the litigation is live, with USDA saying its reorganization will now run through at least February 2027.

Nobody should have to decide their family's future in two days with a job description they have never seen.

💙

🔗 govexec.com/management/2026/08/usda-staff-attrition-relocations-downplays-impact/415475/

08/18/2026

☀️ Good morning Fam!! August 18, 2026. 43 days until end of fiscal year.

Two weeks ago we told you about the paid leave bill. Now we can see what the Senate version actually leaves out.

📍 The setup. In June, a bipartisan House group introduced the Comprehensive Paid Leave for Federal Employees Act, H.R. 9261. Up to 12 weeks a year of paid family leave for a serious health condition, to care for a spouse, child, or parent, for a family member's military deployment, and to deal with a family member being a survivor of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking.

📍 What changed. Senator Brian Schatz and seven other Democrats introduced the Senate version, S. 5168, last month. It keeps the health condition and military deployment provisions. It removes the domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking language entirely.

📍 Why that matters beyond this bill. The Senate is where federal benefits legislation goes to get narrowed. In 2019, the House passed paid family leave in its version of the defense authorization bill. The Senate balked in conference, and what came out the other side was parental leave only, which is still the law today. The same thing happened with the provision blocking anti-union executive orders at the Pentagon. House put it in the NDAA both years. Senate stripped it last year.

📍 So a bill gets introduced already trimmed, hoping to survive a chamber that has repeatedly cut these provisions anyway. That is the calculation, and reasonable people can disagree about whether pre-narrowing helps a bill's odds or just moves the starting line.

📍 The unions are still behind it. AFGE President Everett Kelley: "Expanding paid family and medical leave ensures federal employees never have to choose between caring for themselves or a loved one and serving the American people." NTEU President Doreen Greenwald called it "both the right thing to do and a smart investment in the workforce."

📍 What is actually at stake for you. Right now you can take that leave under FMLA. You just do not get paid for it. Burn through your accrued leave during a cancer diagnosis or a parent's final months and the paycheck stops. And at the IRS and SSA, you cannot even borrow against future leave anymore, because both agencies suspended advanced leave last month.

📍 If this matters to you. H.R. 9261 in the House, S. 5168 in the Senate. The realistic path for something like this is riding a bigger vehicle like the defense bill, which is exactly how the 2019 parental leave law happened.

Twelve weeks in the House. Twelve weeks in the Senate, minus one group of people. Watch what happens in conference.

🔗 govexec.com/pay-benefits/2026/08/bill-expanding-paid-leave-feds-pared-back-senate/415472/

08/17/2026

🌙 Good evening Fam. August 17, 2026. The Gap Nobody Plans For.

There is one risk in the federal benefits package that FEHB does not cover, Medicare barely touches, and most people never think about until they are standing in a hospital hallway making decisions for a parent.

📍 The number that should stop you. Philip Snyder of The Warner Companies puts it at roughly 70% of retirees expected to need long term care at some point. Not a fringe scenario. The default one.

📍 And your pension will not cover it. Snyder's core point for federal employees is that a FERS annuity and a TSP balance, on their own, do not absorb this. Nursing home costs have been rising faster than inflation, which means the gap between what you have planned for and what care actually costs keeps widening the longer you wait.

📍 What FEHB and Medicare actually do here, which is almost nothing. Neither covers custodial long term care, the help with bathing, dressing, eating, and getting around that most people eventually need. Assuming your federal benefits have this handled is the most common planning mistake in this space.

📍 What it costs today. Per the FLTCIP 2024 Cost of Care Survey, home care runs about $51,480 a year at roughly $33 an hour for six hours a day, five days a week. Assisted living averages about $66,132 a year, or $5,511 a month. Nursing home care runs well into six figures annually in most of the country.

📍 The federal deadline nobody is talking about. The Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program has been closed to new applications since December 19, 2022. OPM extended the suspension in December 2024 for another 24 months, which runs it to December 19, 2026. That is four months out. Nobody has said whether it reopens, and OPM has signaled that if it does, abbreviated underwriting for new hires and spouses may not come back.

📍 If you are already enrolled, your coverage continues and claims still get processed. You cannot increase your benefits during the suspension. If a premium hike comes, you generally choose between keeping coverage and paying more, reducing coverage to hold your rate, or leaving.

📍 The option Snyder highlights for people who are locked out. Hybrid life insurance policies, which build cash value and pass unused benefits to your beneficiaries. The appeal is that the money is not gone if you never need care, which is the standard objection to traditional long term care premiums. Worth comparing, worth reading the fine print, and worth doing with a fee-only planner rather than whoever calls you first.

📍 The other two paths people take. Self insuring, meaning you earmark savings and accept the risk on purpose. Or planning around Medicaid, which requires meeting strict income and asset limits and carries a five year look back on asset transfers, so it is not a last minute move.

📍 A word for the sandwich generation here. Plenty of you are handling this for a parent right now while trying to sort out your own plan. Build the folder before you need it: policy documents, care plan, medical records, powers of attorney.

📍 What to do this week. Use the Cost of Care tool at ltcfeds.gov for your actual area, since the spread across the country is enormous. Figure out what your household could absorb from savings and annuity income. Then decide whether you are self insuring on purpose or by accident.

Not financial advice. Just the risk nobody puts on the Open Season checklist.

💙

🔗 finance.yahoo.com/video/long-term-care-planning-federal-083535700.html

08/17/2026

🥪 The Half Hour. August 17, 2026. The High-3 Trap.

Take your break, Fam. If you are anywhere near retirement and anyone is talking about moving you, read this one.

📍 The number first. A GS-13 Step 5 in San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland makes $150,802 this year. The same GS-13 Step 5 in Rest of U.S. makes $120,629. Same grade, same step, about $30,000 apart. Locality rates run from 17.06% to 46.34% across 58 areas.

📍 The part most people miss. Locality pay counts as basic pay. It feeds your retirement deductions and your annuity, your FEGLI coverage, your premium pay, your severance, and your lump sum annual leave payout. It is not a bonus sitting on top of your salary. It is baked into almost everything.

📍 Here is what a move actually costs you. Your high-3 is the average of your three highest consecutive years of basic pay, including locality, taken from anywhere in your career. So earlier high-locality years stay protected. A move to a lower area does not reduce a high-3 you already earned. What it does is stop it from growing. Most people finish on their highest three years because of step increases and annual raises, so moving to a lower area near the end means you lock in the earlier number instead of ending on a bigger one. Meanwhile the immediate hits land right away: smaller paycheck, smaller TSP contributions if you give a percentage, less FEGLI coverage since it is tied to basic pay, and a smaller lump sum annual leave payout, because that is computed at your rate when you separate.

📍 Why we are flagging it now. We have spent months covering forced relocations. USDA. Forest Service. Army Corps. If you are inside a few years of retirement and staring at a relocation notice, run your high-3 both ways before you decide anything. The pay difference between locality areas can follow you for the rest of your life, not just the rest of your career.

📍 The math on that, from today's FedSmith analysis. Average high-3 in the top ten localities is about $139,300. In the bottom ten it is about $121,400. Under the standard FERS formula at 30 years, that is roughly $5,400 a year in annuity, forever.

📍 The flip side, and it is genuinely useful. Once your annuity is computed, it is locked. Moving somewhere cheaper after you retire does not reduce it. Plenty of people work their final years in a high locality area on purpose, then retire somewhere with a lower cost of living.

📍 And the thing to watch in the next two weeks. The alternative pay plan for 2027 is expected before September 1. Last year's brought 1% across the board with no locality increase for most people.

Not financial advice. Just math worth knowing before somebody hands you a form. Back to it, Fam. 💙

🔗 fedsmith.com/2026/08/17/locality-pay-gs13-san-francisco-vs-rest-of-us/

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