Trump’s RTO gets rid of the wrong federal workers

President Donald Trump’s recent announcement of a full-time, five-day-a-week return-to-office (RTO) mandate for federal employees has sparked heated debates across the nation. Framed as a strategy to reduce the size of the federal workforce and boost efficiency, this decision overlooks a critical consequence: the potential loss of the government’s most experienced and skilled employees. If history is any indication, this sweeping policy could usher in a new wave of resignations that would undermine the very efficiency it seeks to enhance. We don’t have to speculate blindly about what might happen.…

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The Democrats’ Working-Class Problem Gets Its Close-Up

The distant past and potential future of the Democratic Party gathered around white plastic folding tables in a drab New Jersey conference room last week. There were nine white men, three in hoodies, two in ball caps, all of them working-class Donald Trump voters who once identified with Democrats and confessed to spending much of their time worried about making enough money to get by. Asked by the focus-group moderator if they saw themselves as middle class, one of them joked, “Is there such a thing as a middle class…

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A Trump Cabinet Pick Gets a Rare GOP Grilling

Republican senators have confirmed a onetime Bernie Sanders supporter to lead the nation’s intelligence community and a member of America’s most famous Democratic family as its health secretary. This morning, however, they saved some of their sharpest questions for a Cabinet nominee who, until last month, served alongside them as a GOP member of Congress. President Donald Trump’s pick for labor secretary, former Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon, knew she’d face a skeptical Republican audience during her Senate confirmation hearing. Last year, she supported a major pro-union bill known as…

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Legislation to axe locality pay for teleworking feds gets Senate companion

Senate legislation targeting locality pay for federal teleworkers now has a companion bill in the House. If enacted, the Federal Employee Return to Work Act would remove locality pay for any federal employee who teleworks at least one day a week. Federal teleworkers would instead only receive their base pay rates. The House bill, introduced this week, comes after Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.) introduced the legislation in August. The Republican-led bill is one of many efforts to scale back telework options for federal employees. (Federal Employee Return to Work Act…

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Proposed 2% federal pay raise gets support in 2025 defense authorization bill

With both Senate and House lawmakers advancing legislation that aligns with President Joe Biden’s 2% federal pay raise request, civilian federal employees appear to be a step closer to a smaller pay bump for 2025. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act last week showed support for a 2% raise for DoD civilian workers and a 4.5% raise for military members. In a vote of 22-3 on June 13, committee lawmakers advanced the 2025 NDAA to the full Senate for consideration. The House…

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